High Dynamic Range Photography

I have been experimenting with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography for a while now and think I have finally gotten it to work. Why HDR? Well, on many occasions I am in situations where there are very bright highlights and relative dense shadows and I would like to hold both. Even in normally sunlit scenes the resulting photos are much too contrasty. HDR provides a technique to make pictures taken in that environment look more acceptable. Below are a series of pictures taken on the Middle Prong of the Little River around 3:00 in the afternoon of March 7th, 2009. The afternoon sun was lighting the far bank of the river and also reflecting off the water. The rocks on both sides of the river had interesting detail in the shadow areas which would be lost with a normal exposure. The standard technique is to take 3 photos at different exposures (normal, for highlights, and for the shadows) and merge them into one final shot with extended dynamic range. Using a tripod is necessary!

The photo in the top left is the normal exposure, the bottom left is one stop under exposed and the one on the bottom right is 1 stop over exposed. The photo in the top right is the composite.

Most cameras have the ability to shoot in a mode called "bracketing". Setting this tells the camera to take multiple (usually 3 or more) photographs in sequence with different exposure values. If you have not used this feature before, find your manual and read how its done with your camera. Each camera will do this differently. My camera allows me to take up to 9 photos at 1/3, 2/3, or a full stop apart. Used with "exposure bias" this provides a great deal of flexibility. Each situation requires slightly different parameters, but what you want is 3 photos that provide 1)a normal exposure, 2)one exposed for the highlights, and 3)one exposed for the shadow detail. Be sure to use a tripod! It is also a good idea to use aperture priority so the lens remains the same during the exposure sequence. Do not modify any of the images before running the "exposure blend".

There are a number of different applications which will do the image merging. Each are slightly different, but all do essentially the same thing. What I use is GIMP, an open source photo manipulation software. GIMP is a free download, so it will not cost anything other than time. The tool can be found under Filters>Photo>Exposure Blend and is fairly self explanatory.
Update: I just realized that a plug-in needs to be added to Gimp. Here is where you can get the Exposure Blend plug-in