Ever looked at those mind boggling, crazy colored, insanely detailed photos and thought to yourself, “how in the world was that affect created?” I know I have.
The first thing you need to know is what HDR stands for. That, my friends, is High Dynamic Range. That is, the difference between the black shadows in an image and the bright highlights in the same image.

When you calculate the amount of information the camera captures and compare that to the amount of data the human eye captures you realize you loose quite a bit of useful information when taking a picture. The difference between the Shadow/Highlights (Dynamic Range) in a standard photo and in what we actually see is staggering! HDR is way of closing that gap, and actually surpassing it completely in most instances. You can make it as crazy looking or normal looking as you want. I believe that most photographers that use HDR went through the same stages I did; when we first find a new technique it’s all we use and we tend to overuse it. Don’t be afraid of this. Explore your new way of taking photos. Go to the extreme and if you’re like me, you’ll swing back full circle to a more natural looking photo like the one to the left. Tomorrow we’ll get into what you will need to actually take the HDR photos and edit them. Comments Encouraged!!!