Bursting Sunrise ~ HDR

johnh2005 · Jun 19, 2011

Fantastic!

SensePhoto · Jun 19, 2011

Bit over done, love the picture though

Destin · Jun 19, 2011

Hands down, this is my favorite HDR shot I've ever seen! Simply Beautiful!

Balastrea · Jun 20, 2011

Beautiful!! Can I ask what software you used, and did you shoot in multiple exposures, and if so how far apart? I am a total noob and am so "jonesing" to get into some HDR!

kgenny · Jun 20, 2011

I really like how it turned out and I agree the way you edited adds to the drama of the photo, gj!!

nstevens · Jun 20, 2011

Wow, that looks great! What software do you use to merge your HDR shots?

johnh2005 · Jun 20, 2011

Balastrea said:
Beautiful!! Can I ask what software you used, and did you shoot in multiple exposures, and if so how far apart? I am a total noob and am so "jonesing" to get into some HDR!

Hi Balastrea, and welcome to the Forums. You should do a google search on HDR and that will probably answer your question. Just a quick note from what I have read about it so far. You basically set up your camera (usually on a tripod) and set it to automatically (or you can do it manually) take a series of pictures one right after the other. You "bracket" it to take, say 5 photos. The first one will be proper exposure -2 stops, then -1 stop, +/- 0, +1, and +2. then you use a piece of software that will search each photo for the best exposure of each one and it sorta "snips" that out of each photo. It then stitches them all together and gives you a fully properly exposed photo that otherwise would be impossible due to the brightest parts of the photo being much brighter than the darkest parts.

I KNOW I probably did not use the proper terms and probably did not explain it exactly right. It was the best I could do and a google search will help you a lot more than my babble =)

GreatPhotoRace · Jun 20, 2011

Gorgeous. Agreed with others however about it being slightly overcooked

Balastrea · Jun 21, 2011

johnh2005 said:
Hi Balastrea, and welcome to the Forums. You should do a google search on HDR and that will probably answer your question. Just a quick note from what I have read about it so far. You basically set up your camera (usually on a tripod) and set it to automatically (or you can do it manually) take a series of pictures one right after the other. You "bracket" it to take, say 5 photos. The first one will be proper exposure -2 stops, then -1 stop, +/- 0, +1, and +2. then you use a piece of software that will search each photo for the best exposure of each one and it sorta "snips" that out of each photo. It then stitches them all together and gives you a fully properly exposed photo that otherwise would be impossible due to the brightest parts of the photo being much brighter than the darkest parts.

I KNOW I probably did not use the proper terms and probably did not explain it exactly right. It was the best I could do and a google search will help you a lot more than my babble =)

Thank you - it is all so intriguing! I can't wait to try this out!

Over Exposed · Jun 21, 2011

Wow, thanks so much for all of the C&C everyone! I took off for the weekend and was shocked to come home to so many replies. I am incredibly grateful.

I'm not surprised at all by the highly cooked comments. This image was left in the oven more so than any other piece I've done. I fought the urge but ultimately after a couple of hours of going back and forth decided to land my light smoothing around mid-hi, but my micro and highlight smoothing is very low. I wanted to keep the drama of the light rays without using mod-layers in CS4. I'm usually one to pull my images out of the oven earlier, but the cook time just felt right to me on this one. I can certainly understand it being a detractor for many of you though.

As for my HDR program of choice, I use Photomatix. After going through trials of all of the programs I could find, Photomatix just seemed the best fit for me.

Balastrea, I should add that with really dynamic scenes like this one, many more exposures over a broader range are needed. It's not uncommon for me to use 10-14 exposures when shooting into the sun like this.

myshkin · Jun 21, 2011

the composition is real nice in this shot. The fence setting the foreground with the rays and great sky. The processing is a touch too strong imo. There is some odd light spots on the trees and grass that seems unnatural. I would try to brighten the dark areas of tree or darken the light areas to even things out alittle

EGphoto · Jun 30, 2011

What a great capture!!

Balastrea · Jul 11, 2011

Over Exposed said:
Wow, thanks so much for all of the C&C everyone! I took off for the weekend and was shocked to come home to so many replies. I am incredibly grateful.

I'm not surprised at all by the highly cooked comments. This image was left in the oven more so than any other piece I've done. I fought the urge but ultimately after a couple of hours of going back and forth decided to land my light smoothing around mid-hi, but my micro and highlight smoothing is very low. I wanted to keep the drama of the light rays without using mod-layers in CS4. I'm usually one to pull my images out of the oven earlier, but the cook time just felt right to me on this one. I can certainly understand it being a detractor for many of you though.

As for my HDR program of choice, I use Photomatix. After going through trials of all of the programs I could find, Photomatix just seemed the best fit for me.

Balastrea, I should add that with really dynamic scenes like this one, many more exposures over a broader range are needed. It's not uncommon for me to use 10-14 exposures when shooting into the sun like this.

10 - 14 exposures? Wow! And Photomatrix will process them all together or do you only select a few from those?

Over Exposed · Jul 11, 2011

Yup, it will process them all at once. I'm not sure what, if any limits, photomatix has for number of exposures. I'm sure there is, I've just never run into any issues so no need to research it.