Have you ever seen high dynamic range photography mode?
Obviously, your answer is yes. Luckily there are many photography software and mobile phone applications that provide you HDR mode. Using HDR is not always a good option for your photos, so is it bad? What is it exactly and how you can take benefit from it?
In this article, you are going to read more about it! are you ready?!
What is HDR?
The high dynamic range stands for the range of lightest tones to the darkest tones in pictures. Therefore, it means the difference between the light and the dark color tone in a photo. In high-dynamic photography instead of having one picture, you have three pictures. Each of these three photos is taken with a different exposure, so the details and dark and light color tones in each of them are different. In order to have HDR, you can also use editing software, choose the best parts of each photo and merge them. Nowadays in many mobile phones which have the HDR option, choosing the best parts and mixing them is done by the phone. Many professional photographers that use DSLR, create HDR photos by themselves. They take three to five different photos and create HDR ones with the use of editing software such as Photoshop.
Time to ask Where, Why, and How?
Landscape photography
In this type of photography when you take outdoor photos, usually there is a high contrast between the land and the sky. Therefore, it is better to use HDR to minimize the darkness of the shadows and the lightness of the sun. Having HDR helps photographers to keep the details of the darkest and lightest parts of a picture.
Scenes with low light or Silhouette (Anti-light)
If your photo will become too dark or will have many dark parts, HDR will help you to improve the lighting. There is still a piece of advice! If the whole light of your photography scene is low or with a very bad light you should forget the HDR mode! Try the other ways.
Fixing photos
Do you use HDR mode to fix the photos? No! It’s not a good decision to try making a bad photo with poor lightening to a good one. Keep in mind that a good image is the combination of good lighting, good composition, and a good subject that attracts the viewer’s eye.
Movements and HDR
If you are in a place that your photo subjects are moving, it is better not to use HDR. The reason why is the risk of having blurry pictures! We said that every HDR photo contains three pictures so if your subject moves from one to the third one you will end up having a terrible photo!
High contrast
High and strong contrast in some situations and pictures make them more impressive. Using HDR results in reducing the contrast. Consequently, your photo doesn’t look good.
Take this information into account and use HDR mode in good situations. Natural photos are always the best choice than unrealistic photos. Try high dynamic range photography and be selective.
Credit: Samin Mousavi
