... “hdr,” or “high dynamic range,” photography is simply the use of technical means to capture an image which has a range of light intensity from black to white that is greater than a film or sensor’s ability to capture it ... the best example would be a picture taken on a sunny day while skiing ... if the snow shows detail in the final image, the deep shadows under the trees will be completely black, or, if you can see details in the shadows, the snow will be “blown out,” pure white with no detail visible ...
... film and digital sensors capture more of the dynamic range than can be printed or displayed on a monitor ... hdr photography is a way of “compressing” the dynamic range ... there are two methods of hdr photography ... one, as old as photography itself, is to simply take several pictures of the same scene, exposing one for the highlights and one for the shadows, then combine them ... this used to be done in the darkroom, now it can be done using software ...
... another method of hdr photography is to take a single image, then using darkroom techniques or software manipulate the dynamic range so that it can expressed in a print or on a monitor ...
... or, if on a rather cold and icy day a couple of weeks before christmas you're working the counter in the bookstore and the weather has kept all the customers away, you can take a "regular" image from your folder marked "revisit" and enter into a little dance with hue and value and contrast ...
... hdr photography seems to stir great debate in the photography world ... some photographers love it, some detest it ... from my perspective, there're the same camps which used to fight over "kodachrome vs. ektachrome," "black & white vs. color," or "small vs. large format negatives" ...
... me, when i'm making a picture my hope is simply that it will be appreciated by someone else ...