alexwrege.com

I’ve been experimenting with high dynamic range imaging recently. HDRI is a technique where multiple shots of the same object are taken from the same position and only the exposure levels are changed. An increased luminance and radiance in the composited image is the result. Generally speaking, the purpose is to create/composite an image that accurately represents the situation, rather than the ‘fake’ images that are produced by digital cameras. Fake, in the sense that normal digital cameras have a tendency to skew sky tones, skin tones, highlights and shadow and replace that actual image situation with a slightly altered, more pleasant, depiction of the subject. Sometimes you don’t want that and then HDRI is the way to go.

When I took this image of University Hall this afternoon, the real situation looked like the image that you see above. However, my camera (Nikon D40X) produced the image below - not a crappy image, but an inaccurate one. So I took a series of images with alternating exposure brackets and composited them together to get the HDRI shot you can see above.

Again, the objective here is not to create ‘the prettier picture’ but to create an accurate image. Judge for yourself, one of the originals is below.