HDR Workshop Notes

I had the honor of attending the HDR Workshop put on by the legendary Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms fame and the other living legend Scott Bourne – host of Photofocus, social media guru, and oh yeah a renowned bird photographer. This was not my first exposure to HDR as I had been snapping HDR images once we got our first DSLR, the mighty D90, over a year ago.

Looking back my first images were just mediocre, but as almost everyone who shoots HDR experiences, it’s that initial WOW factor that sucks you into the world of HDR.

Once I got turned on to Trey’s site and read the HDR tutorial I was immediately blown away by the technique and the images themselves. Trey was really taking HDR to the next level with his masking techniques and really improving on the initial results from Photomatix (my HDR program of choice as well). Once I started to implement the StuckInCustoms techniques for masking I began to truly see the potential for HDR to bring out the best of an image.

I then attended the HDR Workshop back in January of this year, and I know this post may be a long time coming, the information is still very relevant and interesting. After doing HDR for over a year now I still think that just like photography in general – you are always learning and evolving. If you haven’t already, please read the HDR tutorial on the site!

Tips for Shooting HDR Images:
Here are some general tips for taking High Dynamic Range photos, if you haven’t tried one already don’t be afraid to give it a shot.
Use a Tripod! The HDR process blends your images together so any subtle camera movement from image to image will show up in the final product. In bright sunlight you can sometimes get away with handholding the camera, but every tripod photo I’ve taken has been vastly better in sharpness.
Set you camera to Aperture priority mode and then turn on bracketing. Give yourself a nice deep landscape aperture like f/8.0 or f/11 – another reason to use a tripod for sharpness. Bracketing is where the magic happens with HDR and tells the camera to take multiple photos of the same scene with different shutter speeds to let in more or less light.
Shutter release or self-timer. See the common theme here about reducing camera shake and getting the sharpest image possible? Canon cameras such as the 5D Mark II and the 7D have a nifty little timer with a “2” next to it that will shoot a reduced timer shot, and if your camera is already set to Auto Bracketing it will take all three bracketed photos once the timer goes off – genius!
Lastly, make sure you are shooting at a constant (and low) ISO, preferably ISO 100 for Canon or ISO 200 for Nikon. Auto-ISO modes could throw off the camera in between brackets and you want a low to reduce digital noise and produce consistent imagery.

HDR Tips for Basic Processing:
Export JPEGs from Lightroom using no adjustments from the RAW files, 100% export.
Load JPEGs into Photomatix with everything unchecked if you were using a tripod.
In Photomatix: set strength to 100%, Adjust Black & White points, microcontrast fairly high, smoothing in the middle or middle-right, microsmoothing lower number to bring out textures.
Load completed Photomatix file along with original JPEGs into Photoshop Layers via Bridge
Begin masking techniques to bring out the best of each original JPEG and remix it with the HDR result to enhance (see more on website tutorial).

One of my biggest revelations from the HDR Workshop and tutorial from my previous methods of working with HDR images is that Photomatix is not the final image. For an HDR image to really shine you need to bring it into Photoshop clean up the noise, enhance certain areas of the image, and really make the colors pop. Much like a portrait, while we strive to get things mostly right in camera, sometimes those pixels need a bit of “massaging” to really bring them to life and add that artistic touch!

Even though I still love shooting people for the interaction and uniqueness each person brings to a photoshoot, HDR will always remain a passion of mine. Look for another post where I go over some more notes from the HDR Workshop and what Scott Bourne says about Composition which was worth the price of admission to the workshop alone! Look for another post in the future about composition tips – got to spread the content out a bit :). Now get out there and experiment with HDR!