I recently photographed two curiosities in the Sunapee/Sutton area.  Both were surrounded by trees and both days were bright and sunny.  This is a deadly combination for creating a nice photo—the contrast is way too high and the shadows tend to “confuse the image”.  So I tried a 5-shot high dynamic range (HDR) blend.

HDR is a technique where you take multiple exposures (some brighter than normal and some darker) and use software to blend the images into a single version.  In this way one can tame the contrast; compress the dynamic range.  For quite a while I have used Photomatix to accomplish this blending and “tone mapping” since the HDR tool in Photoshop was much inferior.  However, with CS5 Photoshop’s “HDR Pro” tool is much improved.  So now I use both but still favor Photomatix in most cases.  The two example here were both created with Photomatix.

Since the creation of a single blended image from multiple captures involves getting them to align properly, using a solid tripod is very helpful.  But on these two occasions I did not have a tripod handy.  So I used a technique that sometime works well—high speed HDR. You set the shutter release mode to the  fastest burst possible, use auto-bracketing, and brace the camera as best you can so it moves as little as possible between exposures. If you are steady enough the software will be able to fix the misalignment.

HDR software has multiple sliders to control many features of the mapping of tones from the 32-bit initial image to the resultant 16-bit image.  How you choose to set these sliders has a major impact on the “look” of the image. One can go for a realistic look or a very unusual, somewhat painterly, look.  I did one of each in the following images.

This wood fired steam engine was abandoned near a quarry in Sunapee years ago.  It was used to haul stone up out of the quarry. I made no attempt at realism here.

The boot tree in Sutton is hard to find even if you are looking for it. It blends nicely with the surroundings at this intersection. There are a total of 5 boots; East Sutton is hidden  behind the tree in this view.