Downtown San Diego at Sunrise + HDR How To Video

I really don’t quite remember when I was introduced to HDR photography, definitely within the last year or so, but I do remember how cool I thought it was. To be able to capture an image that is closer to what the eye really sees seemed very beneficial to me. The science of it is that our eye can see about 11 f-stops (exposure levels) where as a camera can only capture about 5. So what HDR does is take multiple pictures with exposures at the extremes of dark and light with normal exposures and slams them into one photo to create a High Dynamic Range photo.

A couple months back during summer I felt inspired to get up before dawn and drive past downtown, over the Coronado bridge, and over to the side of the bay overlooking downtown San Diego to catch the sunrise. The night before it had been very clear and I knew it would be a great sunrise – click on the picture to make it larger. Do you like the photo or does it look too fake to you because of the HDR effect?

There’s a guy by the name of Trey Ratcliff and he has made some beautiful HDR images and just recently published a book. I followed the tutorial he had online to learn and I suggest you do the same as it’s very informative and the pictures are quite inspirational.

I have a pocket Canon that takes time lapses so for my own entertainment so I took a time lapse of what it takes to make an HDR. The first couple times I think I would spend close to 45 mins on each image but after awhile it takes less and less time as you get used to the software and more importantly understand what does and doesn’t work in HDR – essentially seeing the light.

The time lapse turned out pretty cool so I made a quick movie. Obviously, you can’t “learn” how to make an HDR from the video but I thought it was pretty fun and you might enjoy watching it.

If you’re also a photographer how does your process differ? Any tips for me or the other people looking at this post?