HDR - a simple walk through

HDR... tremble, quake. Have you heard of it? It sounds terribly complicated and most beginner photographers I know think this is something far beyond them. Google it and you will find out all about dynamic ranges, optics, RGB, CMYK, computer algorithms and a hundred other big poncy words. Look at the images - some are stunning, most are just plain wierd and apocolyptic looking, overly saturated and almost cartoonised.

HDR is one of my favourite techniques, but it gets a lot of bad press for being "cheating" and is often rediculously overdone. Actually anyone can do it with any digital camera and it is really easy! Here is my quick guide to doing it.

First of all, how does it work,... actually I don't care. If you do, then feel free to bore yourself for hours on the internet without getting any better images. It is NOT a cure all for a lack of talent or patience. In fact to get a good quality HDR image, you really need to be extra careful about composition as you are drawing attention to everything in the image.

So why use it? Very basically, a camera cannot differentiate shadows and highlights like the human eye can, using HDR letes you show up all the detail you could actually see, without worrying about the limitations of your camera. It lets you make very detailed images, correctly exposed at all areas of the image and with as rich or pale colours as you like. Use it when you have no access to filters and there is a strong difference in light between the brightest and darkest parts of the image. The main use is in landscapes.

How do you do it? OK forget all the techy explanations you saw when you were boring yourself on the internet earlier. This is how to do it. Set up your camera on a tripod. You are going to take multiple pictures but the camera MUST not move at all between images. Not even a tiny bit. There's no getting round it, you need tripod and preferably zero to no wind.

1. Set up the tripod, compose your image carefully, everything will be visible in the final image so pay attention to everything in the frame, whether it is shadow or not.
2. Set a small aperture and focus close by (perhaps even use hyperfocal depth of field). You want everything to be adequately in focus.
3. Expose for the mid tones or just let the camera automatically set the exposure
4. Lock your exposure and focal setting (you could just use manual for this)
5. Digital camears wil allow you to adjust the exposure by 1/3rd of a stop increments to a maximum of 2 stops dark and 2 stops light This is normally represented as the bar across the botton of the viewfinder that looks like \...\...\...\...\...\...\ and is called exposure compensation (look up you camera manual if this is news to you). Set the camera to the darkest of these settings and take the image. It will be pretty black but the brightest highlights will have been captured without being burned out.
6. Do NOT move the camera or tripod, but adjust the exposure compensation brighter by 2/3rds of a stop and retake.
7. Repeat this until you are at the brightest setting and everything is burnt out except the darkest shadows, which should now be exposed well.
8. You should now have 6 or 7 images of varying exposures. Load them to your PC.
9. Now you need to use some special but fairly cheap HDR software. I have found Photomatix to be very easy to use. Load all 7 exposures to the software where they will be blended.

You can adjust the relative exposures and contrasts in the software. My tip is to try to make things look natural, do not overdo it or it will be painfully obvious.

That's it you now have an image where EVERY element is exposed correctly, he colours will be fairly rich and you should have a high impact image. Import it to photoshop to carry out any fine tuning, cloning, dodging and burning as necessary, like you would with any image. What makes a great HDR image? Well each to their own, but here is one I think is not overdone but I just could not have done without this technique.

Also remember that while most HDR's tend to be supersaturated, this image technique can be used with muted colours and even mono's - it's about the exposures, not the colours.

It's also a lot of fun - go on, get a free trial of some HDR software and have a go!

Macro - Did you know a fly has hairs betweeen each eye segment - eeuuurghh!

Well I didn't do so well at the portrait competition - only the top 3 were announced, and I didn't place and got no comments back - so I guess it's up to you guys if I am going to get any feedback on these. Never mind, chalk it up to experience.

This weeks NYIP challenge is macro photography. I have a macro lens and I enjoy using it but I'm still at the stage of "Wow! Look how close I can get!" rather than trying to compose fantastic artistic shots - at least I am aware of this however and trying to do something about it. Here is my entry to the competition. I think it holds its own but it got me thinking - what makes a good macro shot?
I wish I'd researched this before I entered my competition, but there is what I've learned. First of all, depth of field is all important. You want to blur out the background with some pleasing bokeh but you must keep the subject in focus. Many less accomplished macro toggers (including myself as you can see by this image) use a shallow DoF and end up blurring part of the subject unintentionally (of course some blurring can be good for the more "arty" shots, I actually like the way the attention is brought to the head of this hover fly by lightly blurring the tail). using a wide DoF, by closing the aperture (ie a big numbered "f stop" value) gives stunning images. Check out Mr Plonsky's images for examples of how to do this, without using expensive equipment.

As well as getting the right DoF for your shot, for this type of shot the most important thing is getting the focus bang on, and with absolutely no camera shake. So, how do you do this - simple, use a tripod!...Hang on... by the time my tripod is set up the bee will have flown off (terribly restless critters, bees). Here's my method, I only take macros on well lit days, or I use a flash with a big zoom. Because you are using fast speeds to prevent shake and probably low ISO numbers to preserve the detail, because the light is cut down by your sheer proximity to the subject, and because many people use a long lens close up to help increase the bokeh behind the subject, light is always a difficulty with macro photography. Using flash is problematic, most macro images are taken from inches rather than feet away, so the subject can be washed out by the flash. I tend to stick to bright days. I set the shutter speed as fast as I can (minimum 1/250th if possible on a 70mm prime lens - this is about 3 x faster than you normally need to take a picture hand held with this lens), I set my focus manually (lock it if you like) and then I brace myself as best I can (feet apart like on a surf board, elbows tucked into my chest and stomach, take a breath in and hold it) and make a tiny rocking motion so the subject slides in and out of focus. Half depress the shutter, then I rely on my lightening fast reactions and take many exposures in case I got it wrong. It's a little hit or miss but it means you can move to a new position quickly and follow that bee!

There are other methods for taking images of tricky moving subjects, one's which I have heard of but do NOT approve of, these are killing an insect and then taking it's picture, catching an insect and putting it in the freezer to make it sluggish... there are more sculduggerous methods but frankly, I think they are not only cruel but also cheating. The fun for me is in getting the photograph just right, under difficult conditions.

An alternative method of focussing better is to take multiple exposures and blend them in Photoshop. Just like they said on "Blue Peter", here is one I prepared earlier of a white cross spider. Note that this is from two shots, carefully lined up in Photoshop, one where the head is in focus and the other where the thorax is in focus. It's not perfect but is good enough for web publishing. This is a tricky bit of post processing, personally I find it difficult but you can get software that will blend this for you in a similar method to that of HDR photography. It would probably just have been easier to have used a narrower aperture but I liked the reflection of light to the left, blurred by the narrow DoF.

So that's the technical aspect of macro photography. We've still to cover the artisic nuances. You'll be glad to hear that these differ very little from any other type of snapping. You need to pay attention to the usual rules of composition, simplify, draw attention to the subject and understand what you are taking and what you are trying to achieve. Use rules of thirds, lead in lines etc.

The main thing that macro pics give that others don't is a very unusual angle - a view of something you don't often see. Make use of that. Make the subject the parts of something that are normally invisible to the naked eye - this gives the "Wow!" factor. Did you know that flies have hairs at the the junctions of their compound eyes. I didn't! I had no idea just how hairy flies are!

Finally, like all photography, telling a story gives an image a memorable hook. How much better would the images above be if say the spider was about to catch the fly! I like my first image here, of the hover fly as it is in context, on a flower and it's "tongue" is actually out in contact with the flower it is sitting on.

So in summary, here are the things that IMHO make a great macro image (and if I ever take one that ticks all the boxes, I'll let you know!):

1. Suitable Depth of Field
2. Pleasing bokeh
3. Pinsharp focus, especially on the eyes.
4. Composition - rules of thirds, leading lines, repeating patterns etc.
5. Attention to the lighting
6. Novelty ie the detail we don't normally see
7. A story.

In other words, many of the things I look for in any photographic medium. The tricky bit in macro photography is that many of these factors have to be that bit more precise and are that bit more difficult to achieve.

If you have not tried macro photography, give it a go. Not only does it open a whole new realm of subject matter but practice at photography with these fine tolerances, with this attention to the technicalities of photography, will make you a more accomplished photographer across the full spectrum of styles and subjects.

Before I close this post - here are some great examples of what can be done - contrary to my examples above you don't HAVE to only take pictures of hairy wee beasties:
25 amazing macro shots
50 more very cool shots