Today’s post poses a question, to HDR or not to HDR? HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and I’ve begun to use the abbreviation as a verb with friends & family as we joke about the process (which uses multiple exposures overlaid on top of each other to reach a broader dynamic light range)….but as you can tell from scrolling through the website, it’s something that I truly enjoy doing – as I find that it’s similar to the darkroom black & white processing I learned to do in college. The digital post processing is still the romantic part to me (although shooting the scene is still most important), where it is up to you to create your vision. I use it mostly to try and replicate what I saw with my eyes when I was taking the photos. A single exposure often feels too flat to me, still beautiful – but short of the memory I have of the particular scene/experience.
To serve as an example, I’ve posted two versions of one of my all-time favorite images – the sunrise shot taken of the Peirce Island Boat Ramp. The first is the “HDR” version, while the image below is nearly “out of the camera” with minimal additional tweaking. Regardless – it was clearly a beautiful scene, but I’m curious to hear – which do you prefer?
