High Dynamic Range Photography.

This is a high dynamic range photograph of the boating lake inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai.  These type of photographs are actually a composite of three, five or more pictures of the same scene taken at different exposures.


As I had not taken a tripod along I placed the camera on a ledge, part of which can be seen in the foreground.  A tripod or a stable base is essential for such photography.  Your camera should also have the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function which automatically clicks 3/5 photos at different exposures from underexposed to overexposed.


The photographs are then combined in Photoshop or other specialised HDR software like Photomatix to produce one single photograph.  As you can see in the above photograph there are no totally light or dark areas though it was taken at nearly noon on a monsoon day.


Generally this technique is used in landscape photography.  The dynamic range of a photograph is the difference between the brightest and darkest areas in it.  A high dynamic range photograph allows the viewer to see the detail in the dark as well as the very light areas.


Landscape photography requires apertures from F/11 to F/20.  These apertures give reasonable depth of field so as to have the full photo in sharp focus.   Apertures smaller than F/20 can cause colour diffraction to occur leading to undesirable results.