Walking around the inside this covered bridge last weekend, I knew that it was the perfect subject for some HDR. I’m not a particular fan of HDR as a rule, but knew that this would be a good place to give it a try. I took a series of bracketed shots using the in-camera HDR feature in my camera. But when I got to playing with it in Lightroom, I decided to see what it looked like without actually blending the frames. As it turns out I think that I actually like it this way. I’ve had to make some pretty extreme exposure adjustments and it’s as noisy as my neighbor’s dog, but I think I’ve got the final result that I envisioned when I took the photo. And ultimately, if I get the result I’m looking for it really doesn’t much matter how I get there, does it?
Here’s a “before” shot just to see where I started:
Amazing the details you can get from LR. For curiosities sake what did the HDR image look like?
Hi Monte –
I’ve actually not bothered with the HDR version since I liked this one pretty well. I may mess around with it just for fun, and if I do I’ll post it.
Man! Considering what the original looks like, you were sure able to pull out a lot of detail. I’m not a fan of HDR either. Heck, if you can squeeze out this much detail, who needs it? 🙂
Tom, The latest versions of LR offers some pretty amazing control of highlights and shadows doesn’t it. However, looking closely at the before photo it clear that the details were still there in the shadows…a tribute to you and the capability of your camera. Very nice but there’s still something appealing about the original one.