BEFORE YOU SHOOT
When it comes to HDR photography, a photographer has to consider different steps before shooting. However, we still need to see the various aspects of light and the image composition. Before taking a photo is very important to think about these elements, the background, the capture of detail and the light avaiable. As mentioned we will see the 5 steps before shooting HDR.
1) CHOOSE THE PLACE
This is the most important thing to do when you are going to take a picture, whether is HDR or not. Act as a photographer, wait for the right moment to shoot, and just the right light conditions. If you act in a professional way you will reach professional results.
2) CHOOSE THE LENS
The choice of lenses is decisive in a photo composition. Different lenses provide different perspectives. Using wide angle lenses in a HDR image, you will be able to capture images with a good Depth of Field (DOF), setting high valours of aperture. Furthermore the choice of wide angle is also the optimal solution for giving a greater sense of width to your photos.
3) CHECK THE BACKGROUND
A picture is considered as a whole and not in what you can see at first glance. Cover all the elements and start thinking now about how to eliminate or bypass unwanted elements. Be careful distracting subjects or elements can ruin your photograph.
4) CHECK THE LIGHT
Light is the main element in a picture, no light, no details, no pictures. Make sure you always have the even amount of light. See the light and its features, you must pay attention to its direction, the contrast range in the scenes, the quality of the light and the colors. In this way you will be sure to reach what you see.
5) CHECK POSITION
Don’t take all your pictures standing straight up. Instead, move your camera and take a walk around what you want to photograph. Move it up and down and backward or forward. Try to create a unique perspective of image for the viewers. The longer you take to explore the subject from different angles, the better off you’ll be at creating an interesting image with it.
SHOOTING HDR
Rather than what one might expect, the most important thing to make a HDR is doing a good shoot, the distinctiveness of an image created with this technique is not only achieved with a good post-processing but with photography itself.
So, in order to capture an image that would be a good HDR photo, we have to imagine it at the end of the editing process. For this reason surreal or melancholy shots are preferred. I highly recommend not to take photographs in the hours when the sun is high, rather prefer the early hours of the day or the sunset, when the light is constantly changing and when you can take the full details of the clouds in the sky.
To shooting HDR try to be as accurate as possible, the more clean you are, the few will be the differences between images and the more your HDR will have the desired effect.
For this reason it is very important to use the camera in aperture priority, the camera in this way during the bracketing overexpose / underexpose adjusting shutter time your “imposition” of the diaphragm and in this way will keep unchanged the depth of field (DoF) on all shots.
I recommend the “quality” and “cleaning” of images taken, for this reason shoot in RAW mode to capture the widest dynamic range possible. As regards instead the “cleaning” of the picture would be good to shoot with low ISO (possibly 100) and the lowering of all the other settings that can create noise in the shots.
1. A camera that allows shooting in bracketing mode. With this feature you can set the number of shots you want and the variation of exposure between the images. You can clearly make this series of shots even without this feature but you could run the risk of moving the camera with the result that the image is moved.
2. A tripod to avoid blur the micro, if there is movement, it will result in a blurry HDR
3. A remote controller to avoid interacting on camera manually.
1. Set on aperture priority (A)
2. Set shooting RAW mode
3. Set min 3 shots from the camera using Bracketing
Once you choose what to shoot, you will have 3 exposures:
The first exposure should be a regular shot, don’t worry about adjusting the exposure of this picture. The important thing in this image is to get an even amount of light.
The second exposure should be darker than the first. Getting this image darker allow you to bring out the colors in the bright areas of the image.
The third exposure should be brighter than the first two. This exposure will affect the foreground image and the details in the dark areas of the photo.
