Ever since I was able to actually own a DSLR, this is one of those photography techniques that I wanted to try. However since a good tripod is essential to do this, I had to postpone the idea for a while.

All I know about HDR (high dynamic range) photography is that you take a shot of the same scene for several times with different exposures each and then use a photo editing software (i.e. Photoshop) to stack all the photos in one frame. The effect is that the photo will show all the details of the scene taken (eliminating the shadows and overexposed parts) and it will have this painting-like aura of it.

This blog teaches how to create an HDR image in the simplest way with GIMP. This is perfect since I don't have Photoshop in my machine. It is very easy to follow and it also tells more about HDR photography.

So, this is my first ever attempt to create an HDR image. The first subject that was available to me is our house. I took three shots of our dining table, with a -2, 0, and -2 exposures following this method in choosing the shutter speed for the camera.

dark photo

middle

light

Following the tutorial, I stacked these three photos on GIMP. And this is what I got as the HDR image.

hdr image

The image looked like a painting. All the details can be seen. However, notice that the final image appears almost the same as the light image. What I expected is that the final image will show some blending of the hues of the three images.