Rick Sammon's HDR Photography Secrets for digital photographers

Chapter II. Must Know Info

This is a must-read chapter. It contains info that you must know for creating knockout HDR images. 'Nuf said.

You'll see this San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, police officer later in this chapter.

See the Light & Determine Bracketing

The first step in creating an HDR image (or any photographic image for that matter) is seeing the light. The most important part of this for HDR photography is seeing the contrast range in the scene. The contrast range is the difference between the shadow and highlight areas.

Seeing the color of the light as well as its direction and quality is also important, because these factors affect how we perceive a photograph. For now though, we'll focus on contrast.

In the top picture of a church in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the difference between the darkest and lightest parts of the scene is fairly wide. In the bottom picture of a quaint street corner in San Miguel, the contrast range is smaller than it was in the church.

Seeing the contrast range of a scene, and understanding it, will help you determine how many exposures you need to capture the full dynamic range of the image. That's covered on the next page.

Too Few and Too Many Shots

Here are two screen grabs of the files I used to create the HDR images on the previous page. They are ...