Practical HDRI: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers by Jack Howard is the latest book I have read on the subject. I haven’t touched my Photomatix software (indeed, even my camera) for some time. Reading through this book helped inspire me to get back out shooting photos, and also to see if Olympus was doing anything to help with the capture of HDR images. As it turns out, the recently released Olympus E-620 has far better support for proper image bracketing to get the exposures you need.

The book itself is fairly short - just 168 pages. But these pages are full of good information and practical examples using more than just one software package. What I like most about it is the frankness of the author when it comes to producing realistic HDR images, as opposed to some of the cartoonish extremes that have come to symbolize the genre. I much prefer a realistic image that has great depth in all ranges between the darkest and lightest sections of the image. In addition to the software examples (Photoshop CS3, Photomatix and FDRTools), the author tells you what to watch for when capturing the images, well before they see the computer.

All in all this was a very worthwhile book, with more than enough interesting bits for the novice and experienced alike. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for more information on HDRI.

Dan Achatz, a regular in the Flickr PFRE group, put together one of the best HDR tutorials I have seen yet. He goes through his process of compiling the images into a realistic representation of what he saw in person. It is well worth taking some time and watching the video.

After watching it, I followed his steps when making the HDR image shown above. It’s the used tire warehouse at Metal Movers, a Denver, Colorado based auto recycler. I am doing some website consulting for them and needed some photos of the different products and services they offer. A tire warehouse of this size is a lighting challenge due to all the dark colors and shadows, so I thought it would be best to do an HDR to represent it. This particular image is a combintation of 5 exposures, taken at the intervals that Photomatix recommends. I think it came out pretty well, the notable exception being the fluorescent overhead lights. I need to practice with HDR more, but I am really pleased with the results I am starting to get.

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to all. I have been seeing great pictures of holiday lights this season, and finally decided to try and take one of my own. The photo above is an HDR Exposure Blend (using Photomatix) of 7 exposures I took one morning. I also took some photos just using the ambient light and not doing the HDR thing. After reviewing these shots on the computer, I decided the white lights just aren’t very interesting. Normally we decorate the two large fir trees in front of our house with colored strings, but we opted not to this year. Rest assured, we will next year. That will give it some “life” I think. So instead, I will go out in search of other homes in our neighborhood to take pics of. I had better hurry, only a week to go before most people take their lights down.

Oh, and I should point out that the inspiration for this, besides the photos I linked to above, was a Strobist article about holiday light pictures. As is the norm with Strobist help, this article was wonderful for a rookie like me.

HDR (high dynamic range) images are starting to take the photography world by storm (at the time of this writing, the HDR Flickr group has over 18,000 members). If you ask a room full of people what HDR is, you get a wide range of answers, and typically they are all partly correct. Simply put however, HDR imaging is the process of creating an image that encompasses a wide range of exposure values. This allows the resultant image to be nearly all encompassing in every detail. HDR Imaging has, until very recently, been the purvey of Hollywood graphic and special effects artists. “The HDRI Handbook” by Christian Bloch helps bring this exciting arena to everyone else.

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