HDR Digital Images of Sturgis Bike Trip 2009, First Day On The Road

Hey, I'm back from one heck of a ride. My riding buddy, Roger, and I were on the road for 15 days and it was quite an adventure this year. We experienced every kind of weather imaginal, including freezing rain, lightning storms, 50 to 60 mile an hour head and cross winds, a snow storm that closed Bear Tooth Pass,and a forest fire near Hat Creek in Northern California.

Our first day out was as we expected, fast and hard in 100 degree weather. We covered about 500 miles and didn't stop much to take photographs. I did however spot an interesting old home near Ontario Oregon and took the time to take a quick photo. Here is what I came up with. I titled this one, "Priorities". A guy has to do, what a guy has to do. Ride like a bandit and to hell with the house maintainance!

Here is the photograph taken with normal exposure settings:

I shot a series of three bracketed exposures of this image so I could do some experimenting with HDR. This image was taken in early afternoon and does have some challenging lighting, do to the extremes in contrast. Using "Photomatix" which is the software I use for creating High Dynamic Range photographs, I created the next image using the exposure blending mode. The 3 exposures were bracketed at: 2 stops over exposed to capture detail in the shadows: 2 stops underexposed to capture detail in the highlights: and a normal exposure for the mid range tones.

No additional color or density corrections have been done but the shadow and highlight details are much improved over the original single exposure and I now have a file with a wider range of detail in both the shadows and the highlights. Further tone and density corrections will be much easier to do with this image than if it were made from a single exposure.

Now for the fun part! Next I took the same 3 images that were used in Photomatix's exposure blending mode and used the image detail enhancer to create the following image. Like it or love it, I think you will admit, It is interesting, and does get your attention. The interesting part of using the image detail enhancer is, you have a larger amount of creative control. You can create images with beautiful detail in both the highlight and shadows, or you can opt to create a funky effect like the image below using a variety of slider options.

After all, photography is suppose to be fun! HDR is just another way of having a good time as well as a means to getting some nice digital photographs that might otherwise not take. HDR enables you to shoot in extreme or crappy lighting and still produce a high quality image. Oh, and by the way, you don't need to shoot HDR in raw because HDR software is going to convert your files to jpegs or tiffs anyway.

Stay tuned for more images, and a day by day account, of our 2009 Sturgis trip in the weeks to come.

Till next time, stay focused, Terry