HDR Photography

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. HDR photography is used to equalize the lighting in a photograph. It makes the shadows brighter and the highlights darker. I like how much detail HDR adds to photographs, but I also dislike how fake it can make the photo look. It almost makes it look too perfect. Thats just probably because I prefer really dark and unbalanced photos though. I like it better when you can just see the silhouette of something rather than the the image in full detail. I guess I sort of like HRD landscape photography but not if it has any people or artificial materials in the shot. Well, buildings are okay I guess as well (that sounded redundant, my apologies) but I don't know, I'm just not a huge fan of HDR.

The steps to taking an HDR photo (with the process that I know using photoshop) are the following:

1. Get your equipment; you'll need a tripod and a camera with exposure compensation. 
2. Scout for an awesome location to shoot your photo. If you are going to be taking a Portrait of someone, find the person as well. 
3. Set up your camera and tripod. 
4. Take seven photos, adjusting your exposure compensation with each shot; -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 
5. Once you're done shooting your photos, import them into your computer, then into Photoshop; file>automate>Merge to HDR Pro 
6. From here, Photoshop will align and your photos, creating an HDR image. You can then adjust the contrast, saturation, etc, to your likeness, and hit the SAVE botton. 
7. Stare at your finished product for hours because you finally did it! You've created your first HDR photograph!

For my portraits, my model was my buddy, Dylan. Like I stated before, I prefer darker photography so I was going for a more Grudge look to my photos while still making it HDR. I was also looking to tell a story with where Dylan was positioned, how he was positioned, etc. One of the requirements given for the HDR photo assignment was that we needed to make the photos look "surrealistic" or "dreamlike." My portraits were Grudge-themed so this was a bit of a challenge. The pictures were not to be nightmarish, or scary, but surrealistic. In Photoshop I upped the contrast a ton, along with the glow and detail. With my landscape photo, I positioned my horizon line higher in the frame because in my opinion although there was tons of drama in the sky, the actual land in the photo seemed more interesting. I turned the detail up a lot in Photoshop, same with the saturation, vibrance, and glow.