Yes, An HDR Photo of Sunrise at Schwabacher Landing

Sunrise hits the ponds at Schwabacher Landing in Grand Teton National Park

HDR (or High Dynamic Range) is a term thrown around the photography community quite a bit these days. If a graduated neutral density filter isn’t immediately accessible, then sometimes an HDR photo is the only way to capture the drama of a scene, such as the intense shifts in lights and darks at sunrise.

Much of the controversy around such scenes, however, result from the way the photo is actually processed. When most people hear of an HDR image, they think of the typical scene that, in my own opinion, looks a little over-processed with halos around many features of the photo. Some people love it, which is why it’s still around, however I personally prefer a more natural look. What’s happening with those images is typically, someone will take a series of shots of the same scene, 5-10 usually, all ranging from underexposed by a certain amount to overexposed by that opposite amount. Using special software, a program will read the best values of each image and merge them together to create a photo without deep shadows or blown-out highlights. A certain "look," as described earlier, has grown out of this technique that’s become the norm when people think HDR.

While I don’t use those techniques, this is, in all fairness, an HDR image. Why? Because I’ve used more than one shot, creating a high dynamic range of light, to create a final photo. My personal preferred method of creating an HDR photo, however, involves taking one slightly overexposed photo and one underexposed photo and then manually blending them in a program such as Adobe Photoshop. I find that this method, made possible with layer masks, gives me the most control over how each element is exposed and how light or dark a certain part of the photo is. Granted this could be done much easier with a graduated neutral density filter, but this works just as well, if not better, for those times when you happen to have just completely forgotten it.

The subject in question here, is of course, Schwabacher Landing in Grand Teton National Park. The light hitting the peaks and clouds was much brighter than the light in the trees and in the ponds, so without a graduated neutral density filter, blending multiple shots was the only way to preserve all the darks and lights.

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