I’ve been frustrated by a combination of factors when it comes to HDR photography. My camera is one big reason. It was setup incorrectly, which made some of the techniques I needed to access next to impossible to use. Unfortunately, it was a self-inflicted wound. I am color blind and lack of color vision is hard to overcome in HDR photography. And finally, I simply did not understanding the technical process well enough to use it. I was doing everything wrong and my photos were all but unusable.
I drove up to Morro Bay last Thursday after my wife booked me into the Morro Bay Photography Expo as a mini-break to escape my incredibly stressful real life job managing technical projects. I focused on learning HDR from some of the best nature photographers in the genre. After 20 “ah ha” moments and a brief technical session with a master photographer (he fixed my camera). I was able to take a three shot sequence with my D300 and the bracketing burst technique and then put together an HDR photo that was passable. I can now do it in my sleep.
My main reason for learning HDR was to produce realistic photo’s with details at both ends of the dynamic range. The picture shown here is simply your run of the mill HDR over processed image and is not my intended outcome. However, the image is a small victory for me as every previous attempt at HDR produced nothing even remotely useable.
I’ll follow up with a review of the Expo later. It was an interesting mix of geriatric white photographers, immensely talented nature photographers, and well… me.
