HDR – high dynamic range – images may be the future of photography, depending on who you listen to. But future or not, they are here to stay, and they are progressing along the path from “trendy new thing” to “artistic impression” to “subtle and effective tool.

I never jumped on the “HDR is Evil” bandwagon, back when the whole technique first became popular. Frankly, I like the concept – in essence, it lets us make an image that looks more the way our eye saw it, overcoming the inherent limitations of technology in the camera. But make no mistake, HDR processing can be – and all too often is – way overdone. I have harsh critiques for images with glowing halos, completely reversed lighting ranges, or so much saturation that you’d think a box of Crayola crayons puked on it.

Done properly, however – and by that I mean with a subtle touch – HDR images can come out looking incredible.

They’re also a pain in the butt.

The premise seems clear enough – take a series of images of the same scene, each with a different exposure, so that the entire dynamic range is covered. Then run them through software the combines the images, applies tone mapping to the resulting file, and viola, you have an HDR image.

Unless you’re me. Then, 80% of the time, I have some terrible smear of awfulness across the screen.

If you want to see amazing HDR photos, check out Moose Peterson’s recent posts (he claims he’s tired of the technique – if I did it that well, I guess I might get tired of it too!). Moose is taking some time away from his usual wildlife gigs to shoot the Reno Air Races, and his sunrise photos of aircraft on the tarmac are simply stunning examples of HDR. Whatever technique he’s using, he has it down to an art form.

And I can’t figure it out.

So, expect to see some more on HDR in the near future. This is becoming a side project of mine, mostly because it bugs me that I can’t make it work consistently. Take this past Saturday night as an example: I shot bracketed images for four different HDR scenes. After processing, one came out just the way I wanted (see below). The other three were awful.

The trick has to be in the exposures themselves. When I first started playing with HDR, I’d shoot straight brackets: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. Sometimes that works. Sometimes not. Now I’ve started shooting for the actual exposures, which come out something like: -3, -1, +1/3, +1 1/3. Again, sometimes this works, sometimes not.

If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

And if anyone runs into Moose Peterson, ask him how he does it and let me know!