I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to what goes in to making a great landscape photograph. It turns out there are four things, four pillars if you will.  Four, that’s a good number.  There are the four legs of a table or the four wheels of a car.  And not to forget the four sacred directions of the Native Americans.

In landscape photography the four pillars are evenly divided between the aesthetics and the technical.  So what are they?  The two aesthetic pillars are Fantastic Light and Strong Composition.  No surprise there.  The two technical pillars are Appropriate Sharpness and Optimum Exposure.  No surprise there either.  If just one of those pillars is missing, well, the table collapses, the image suffers.

Let’s look at them one by one….

Joshua Tree Spring Sunrise (2011)

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The Death Valley photography workshop will officially kick off in a couple of hours.  But some of the attendees have already shown up and we’ve been out shooting last night and this morning.  It’s all been very informal.

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In the previous tip we discussed adjustments you want to make to your images in Lightroom to prepare them for the HDR process to come.

This next tips covers the step where we get the images out of Lightroom.

Lightroom is a RAW image converter (among other things).  It does RAW image conversions extremely well.  Other great RAW image converters are available to us – Capture One, Aperture, and DxO to name a just few.  These are all highly sophisticated products that do an extraordinary job.

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These HDR tips resulted from a conversation with my good friend Andreas Waldeck, an HDR expert who happens to work with HDRSoft, the publisher of the premier HDR software Photomatix Pro.

In Tip #1 we talked about the correct way to capture multiple images HDR images in the field.  See HDR Tip #1.

Now I want to start discussing the processing of these image files.  The software tools we’ll discuss are Lightroom, Photomatix and, to a much lesser extent, Photoshop.  So let’s get started.

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I shoot a lot of HDR.  That’s where you take multiple images at different exposures so that you capture the full dynamic range of the scene in front of you.  Many people consider HDR to be unnatural and you can definitely get a surreal effect.  But HDR is the only way you can capture certain challenging scenes and make the results look like what you see, not what your camera sees.

I had a talk with my good friend Andreas Waldeck who works for HDRsoft, the creators of Photomatix.  This is the premier software for doing HDR.  Andreas shared some things with me that were real eye-openers and I’d like to pass them along to you in a series of HDR Tips.  So let’s get started with the first tip.

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There’s a lot of talk amongst photographers about shooting in the golden hours – around sunrise and sunset.  There’s no disagreement that the light is wonderful at those times of the day.  The low angle gives excitingly long shadows and the fact that the sunlight has to travel through more of our atmosphere means it’s a bit softer and a lot warmer.

So you often find a lot of photographers lining up for sunset shoots at iconic locations.  The bridge over the Virgin River in Zion is a perfect example.  I’ve got to admit, I love to shoot sunsets from the bridge myself.  Most photographers will arrive early and stay about 20 minutes after the sun disappears below the horizon at which time the pack up and head off to dinner.

I like to stay till I can’t shoot any more.  The light show isn’t over by any means when the glow on the clouds fades.  It’s just a lot more subtle.  As the light fades exposure times increase and when you get up to 30 seconds then ISO starts to bump up.

Why do I like this light so much?  Well, because there is so much going on.  Many complex and intricate things are going on in the sky above.  You end up getting a delicate play of warm and cool light.  Everything is enveloped in a quiet, soft luminance.  It can be a magic unlike any other time of day.

I was shooting on that famous bridge in Zion back in November.  If it hadn’t been for my two friends shooting with me I would have been the only one on the bridge.  Everyone else had long gone.  I was shooting HDR, 5 bracketed shots, something I’ve found to be very effective (don’t forget, the sky stays bright long after the sun disappears).  Each shot was varied by 1 1/3 stop.  Post processing consisted of Photomatix and a little Light Room.  Here’s what I got.  (You can click on these images to enlarge them.)

Watchman at Twilight

A few weeks before I took this Zion twilight shot I found myself in Death Valley on the Mesquite Flats Dunes, again at sunset.  I set up on this one composition and shot it for about an hour and a half.  Many people like the stark contrast created by the sun playing on the undulating surfaces of the dunes.  I like it too.

Mesquite Dunes Sunset

 But a while later comes the real show, at least for my money.  The play of colors becomes outrageous with reds, magentas, purples, oranges, yellows and blues.  And I love the forms and textures of the sand.  It’s truly amazing.

Mesquite Dunes Twilight

So for my money, you’ll see me out there (usually by myself) until I can’t shoot any more.  Hey, why don’t you join me and see for yourself.

Then and only then I’ll pack up my gear and head off for dinner.

Note:  All of the above photographs are HDR, not just Zion.

To see more of my work go to Ralph Nordstrom Photography.

High Dynamic Range or HDR has become a standard and often used tool when I’m in the field.  For example, a few weeks ago when I was shooting sunrises in Bryce Canyon we would arrive well before sunrise.  Generally I would start shooting when it was light enough to get a good exposure at 30 second, ISO 100 and f/16.  That’s a good 20 to 30 minutes before the sun peeks over the horizon.  In that wonderful pre-sunrise light the dynamic range is very low, maybe a total of four or five stops.  There is no need for HDR because under those circumstances I can get a good 8 and if I want 9 stops of dynamic range from my sensor.

But as soon as the sun is above the horizon all that changes.  The dynamic range jumps to at least 8 stops, probably more.  (I don’t take the time to scintifically measure the dynamic range because things happen so fast in those first few minutes.)  I don’t want to take any chances with that incredible light so I switch to HDR, just for insurance if nothing else.

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HDR Exposure 

This is the third in a series of articles on high dynamic range, more commonly known as HDR.  The previous article illustrated how HDR situations occur; namely, when the dynamic range of the subject exceeds the dynamic range the sensor (or film) is capable of capturing. 

But with digital photography there is a technique for dealing with it.  In the field, it begins with taking multiple shots at different exposures so that the combined dynamic range exceeds that of the subject.

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In the first posting we discussed how colors are translated into three numbers in a digital camera, one for each of the three primary colors – Red, Green and Blue (RBG for short).  After all, digital cameras are computers complete with processors, memory and software.  We described the 8 bit color mode in which the numbers range from 0 to 255 and are used to measure and store the brightness of each color.  Zero is darkest dark possible and 255 is the brightest bright possible.  When all three colors are combined in equal proportions you end up with gray.  If all three colors are zeros (0,0,0) you have pure black; if they are all 255s (255,255,255) you have pure white.

Camera Sensor Dynamic Range

The next step in this journey of understanding it to realize how the pixels in the camera sensor work.  Recall that each pixel is really three pixels – one for each of the primary colors.  While the following is an oversimplification, suffice it to say that the sensor has a built in dynamic range that can be measured in stops.  That is to say, the range from the darkest darks to the brightest brights that the sensor is capable of capturing can be measured in stops.  This is also true of all films.  For example, the dynamic range may be as little as five stops (generally most color positive films) and as much as ten stops or more (generally the most advanced digital cameras). For the remainder of this discussion we can assume our camera has a dynamic range of 7 stops.  It can be illustrated in this way….

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This is the first in a series of articles that address the fascinating topic of High Dynamic Range or HDR.  HDR not only refers to situations you face when photographing in the field but also the digital darkroom techniques for processing HDR images.  This first article will lay the groundwork necessary for understanding HDR.

How often do you look at your photographs and are dissatisfied because the images appear washed out, or at least parts of then.  Maybe you took an outdoor family shot at a gathering or picnic.  The people may look great but the sky is washed out.  Or perhaps you were on vacation and something similar happened – part of the image was washed out.  The opposite could also happen.  The image could be too dark.

Normally modern digital cameras have very sophisticated built in light meters that give you excellent exposures.  But often the conditions of the scene you are shooting are simply beyond the capability of camera to capture, regardless of whether you’re shooting digital or film.

If you’re collecting pictures for the family album these defects may not be a problem at all.  It’s the memories that the photograph conjure that are important, not the technical merit of the image.  These are photographic records of important events in our lives.

But if you’re intention is to create a work of art, a washed out image is one sure way to frustrate your efforts.  If you’re shooting RAW you have some ability to recover washed out highlights or black shadows.  However, once you’ve completely lost your highlights and/or shadows there’s nothing you can do to recover them.

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