Today, I'm going to describe a photographic technique we use to add richness to otherwise potentially ordinary elements. While some may get giddy at the sight of vast warehousing racks, many may have trouble seeing the excitement. In the example below we used HDR or High Dynamic Range, to generate the most eye catching and dramatic photo possible. Our goal in this example was to make the user look twice and not simply glance over the photo.

 

 

Now for a little technical talk on how we produced this effect. HDR is a process where a single photo is developed by processing three or more separate photos of the same shot taken at different exposures. In our example here, I set our Nikon D90 to Autobracketing and quickly snapped off three photos at -2, 0, +2. This gave me one photo that was darker or underexposed (-2), one that was brighter or overexposed (+2) and one with a balanced, even exposure (0). With the aide of a special software (there are many which will do this including Photoshop CS5) and loads of tweaking, a single photo was produced that incorporated the best of all three exposures. 

 

The benefit of HDR is that it allows the photographer to capture light and dark details which are impossible to capture with a single photograph. Some even claim it is more akin to how we see the world with our naked eye, an ability limited by camera technology. Imagine being in a darkish room and looking out a bright window. While the interior of the room is not as bright as the window you would still be able to see all the features of the room as well as the scene out the window. Now, if you took a photo of the same scene, most likely the window would be bright and clear but the room would be too dark to distinguish. HDR would allow both the room and the outdoors to be clear. Though the window example is very practical in practice, HDR is one of KMi's eLearning development tools that can also produce very dramatic results that are very pleasing to the eye.