HDR for Natural Effects

Natural-looking landscapes are possible with HDR (Figure 9.5). It starts when you’re taking your pictures. There isn’t a lot that you can do with the camera to get a more natural shot, other than being sure you have a full range of tones from the bright areas to the dark areas in your exposures.

Figure 9.5. You would hardly know this scene in California’s Santa Monica Mountains is an HDR image unless you thought about how difficult it would be to hold detail in the sky and sun and still see all the rocks, shadows and all.

Light, as always, plays a big part in how successful your images will be. Everything about light in Chapter 3 still applies when you’re using HDR. I’ve sometimes seen photographers try to use HDR as a panacea for bad light. Bad light for a landscape is often bad light regardless of the way you’re photographing it.