Preparing for the Apocalypse with HDR Photography
The apocalypse, regardless of how we perceive it as individuals, is something that we all fear. Whether it be the four horsemen, or a storm of ICBM’s falling like angels of death from the sky, the apocalypse is generally considered to be “a bad thing“. Recent developments in photography, however, mean that it is now possible to prepare oneself for the apocalypse, so that it’s not such a horrific sight when it arrives.
HDR photography is a relatively new technique within the field of photography. It consists of multiply-processing the crap out of one image to make it incredibly horrific; or combing a number of particularly crap pictures to create an unimaginably polished turd.
HDR stands for: “Hurts & Damages Retinas“.
To create an HDR image requires special software. Most people choose to steal whatever is available from the wide variety of Bittorrent sites on the internet, but it’s possible that you can get a pikey friend of yours to do you a knock-off copy of something they’ve already nicked if you’re not too tech-savvy. Here’s how it works:
Take an image that you’ve already taken. For the purposes of HDR, it helps if the image has no redeeming qualities and is at least 2 stops underexposed. Here is our tutorial image before we’ve done anything to hurt it:
As you can see, it’s dark, blurry and generally upsetting – All things that you’d associate with the end of the world.
The next step is to drag the image into your chosen HDR software, kicking and screaming if necessary. The actual technicalities of the processing are unimportant. The only thing to remember is that you absolutely MUST drag all adjustment sliders AS FAR AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO MOVE THEM. In fact move them further if you can:
Note the sliders enclosed within the red circle…
Finally, save the image, and import it into your chosen photo editor. It’s always a good idea to increase the saturation some more, whilst subtly increasing the contrast on the sky. Before you’re ready to save the image, don’t forget to oversharpen it several times to make it look it’s absolute best.
And voila! You’re own personal view of the apocalypse. I’m sure that you’ll agree, nothing that comes after this could ever frighten you more:
Hilarious, thanks for the tutorial, I feel ready to create some scary photos now!!
Fantasic DOF
Actually I know one photographer in Canada who does an awesome job with HDR, but I can see your point – when done badly, it’s very bad!
Indeed Rosie – subtlety is key!
Amazing, I knew there was something missing from my previous attempts, a pikey!!!
A class tutorial. I shall add this to my list of post shoot processing.
[...] my own earlier article on getting the best from your HDR shots, I’ve subsequently found another article, that [...]