HDR is not Just for Color

HDR photography has been around for some time now. If you are a photographer chances are you fall in one of three places.

1. You hate it in all of its forms

2. You are okay with the HDR that is close to “natural” looking (this is where I fall)

3. You love it in all of its forms

This is not an HDR hate/like post and you can check out a detailed post I did on HDR here. This is about another aspect you may not have thought about. Sometimes the issues I have with HDR is the amount of color saturation you get when you merge all the images. I generally pull the saturation and vibrancy back in my HDR images to “tone it down”. This time around however I took it all the way down. HDR is not just for color images. Pulling out the dynamic range for images and then converting them to black and white can have a very dramatic effect, especially on any large “puffy” clouds. The next time you are processing some HDR images consider them for black and white just to see what you can come up with.

Working a Subject

Often times when I go out for a fun day with my camera I find a single subject that catches my attention.  Ages ago I would set up a shot that I thought was good and take a couple of exposures.  Then, I would pick up and move along.  Now days though I tend to want to work the one subject just to see the different looks I can produce.  That extends to post processing as well.  I create several "virtual copies" in Lightroom and try different settings to see what happens.  I might even move it over to Photoshop and try working with some layers.  Sometimes all of this works and sometimes it doesn't.  I recently went to South Beach for some sunrise fun.  I wasn't overly excited about the photos I was getting in the beginning and so I became interested in the lifeguard stand that was next to me.  I worked it from many angles and took multiple exposures so that I could do some HDR work on them in post.  Take a look and let me know what you think.  Remember, don't just run up, take a shot, and run away.  There are many ways to explore a single subject.