Some of you may have heard of the term, but if you’re not into photography there’s a good chance you don’t know exactly what high dynamic range (HDR) photos are. Simply put, the goal of the HDR technique is to expand the dynamic range (difference between the light and dark areas) of the image so that it’s closer to what the human eye sees. Camera sensors, although constantly being improved upon, still can’t match the range between detail in light and dark areas as well as your eyeballs. If a scene has something in direct sunlight and something else in deep shadow, you’re going to lose detail in one or both areas when you rely on just one exposure.

To solve that problem, the premise of HDR is simple: take several exposures of the same scene, one for the darkest areas, one for the lightest areas, and one or more in between, and then combine them in post-processing so that all areas of the final image have detail and are not blocked out (shadows) or blown out (highlights).

The image at the top of this post is an HDR comprised of three separate exposures (see below). The wine was in shadow, sitting on my balcony railing (which faces east, and this was sunset), while the background (a treeline) was in bright sunlight. There was no way the camera sensor could capture the color and detail in the wine glass and the nice bright green of the trees. So the solution was combining these three exposures. There are a number of ways to do this; I personally love Photomatix by HDR Soft (standalone $99, also available in various plugin flavors). I’m not going to dive into the details on how to use that particular tool, but basically you load up the relevant exposures in Photomatix, and then play with the sliders until you achieve the desired result.

While Photomatix does offer to align the source images when you first load them, it’s obviously best to shoot the scene with your camera on a tripod — actual stability from frame to frame is no substitute for software tricks. Most DSLR’s have a feature called bracketing which makes firing off multiple exposures of varying compensation easy; on my D90, I turn on bracketing and then with one press of the shutter release it will fire off all the exposures to fill that bracket in less than a second, automatically adjusting the exposure compensation in between each frame. If your camera doesn’t have bracketing, you can of course adjust exposure compensation manually and then fire each shot — it will just take a little longer.

What I’ve shown here — and really the only type of HDR I’ve ever personally done — is a subtle style whose purpose is to closely mimic reality, and do so in a way that only a trained eye would even suspect it might be an HDR. At the other end of the spectrum are the wildly rich HDRs (such as this one), which are a style in their own respect but certainly not representative of reality. Some criticize these more intense HDRs as “cartoony” and there’s a definite divide in the photographic community among those who hate the style and those that appreciate it. There are, of course, also plenty of people — myself included — who say “Art is art” and, you know, do whatever makes you happy.

As I said, there are a number of methods out there to combine photos into an HDR image. It is possible to do it in newer versions of Photoshop too, if you have that…which I do, but I prefer Photomatix because it’s so easy to manipulate the various properties relevant to an HDR image. If you’ve got scenes with huge dynamic ranges, try it out!

Want to see more HDR photos?

• 35 Fantastic HDR photos (Smashing Magazine)
• HDR group pool on Flickr
• Quality HDR group pool on Flickr

It’s been a month since I started my photo-a-day project, known around the web as Project 365. So far it’s proving to be a great challenge and a great learning experience. I’ve built a lightbox, learned how to use (in the most basic way) an off-camera flash, and spent more time rigging shots than I would have ever thought possible. If one thing has been proven, it’s that I still have a lot to learn.

Trying new things and learning to see the world differently is a big part of what Project 365 is about. It’s certainly succeeded for me on the former; as I mentioned, one big new part of my skill set is now off-camera flash. I only have one so far, and no significant rigging to speak of, but even with my relatively simple setup I have learned a lot about how to perform certain types of shots that I never would have understood before. For example, On the Rocks demonstrates two of my favorite properties of using off-camera flash: a blacked-out background and frozen motion (without the harshness of on-camera flash). This is really, really basic stuff in the realm of lighting, but it’s valuable to know.

Seeing the world differently is definitely still a work in progress. Looking around me and knowing what might make a good picture is still a great challenge I deal with almost every day. I don’t live in an area with much in the way of beautiful parks, gardens, or architecture, and it often isn’t an option to spend much time driving somewhere else for a shot every single day. As a result, I often look for things around the home; at least until spring comes, I expect this trend to continue. I still, some days, have trouble honing in on what in my surroundings might make a good photograph, however. Someone once said that painting is the art of inclusion, but photography is the art of exclusion — you have to decide what to keep out of the shot to make it meaningful and balanced. That is what makes it such a challenge.

One interesting observation from my first month on this project is that my most popular shots have been the unplanned, unrigged, spur-of-the-moment ones. For example, Heat was shot while I was at a friend’s apartment and she was making dinner. I just looked over at the stove, saw the glowing burner, and asked her to lift of the pot for a second. I spent ten seconds taking a few shots, and that was it. As it turned out, Heat become one of my most popular shots (by my modest measurements — 477 views and 12 favorites, and a spot in Flickr Explore). Conversely, shots that I spent a long time setting up and fine-tuning (like Drink Drama, my first shot of that kind, which took nearly an hour of experimentation) got far less attention. And that’s perfectly fine, because that shows me what’s good and what’s not, and what I need to improve upon.

In just one month on this project, I’ve improved my throw-away ratio (the number of “good” shots I take vs. how many get trashed), made a serious effort at a portrait, built a lightbox, learned to use off-camera flash, and greatly improved all my post-processing skills with Aperture and Photoshop. All that, while also learning to better drive my camera — I got a Nikon D90 the same day I began this project, and that’s quite a bit more camera than the D40 I used to have. Shooting every day has made me quite comfortable and quick with the myriad settings available on today’s DSLR.

So, as a learning experience in more ways than one, I can’t recommend this project enough for anyone who has a passion for photography and wants to improve and try new things. I can only hope that I continue to improve, and that the next 30 days are even better than the first.

See all my Project 365 photos on Flickr

Photo 1 of 365: Emergency

I’m embarking on a new photographic adventure: Project 365, a self-imposed assignment in which I will take at least one photo a day for an entire year.

The concept dates back several years, and I first heard about it last year, but it seems to really be picking up steam lately. By taking a photo every day, you’re forcing yourself to think creatively and think about composition and think about lighting — no matter where you are or what you’re doing. It has the added bonus of documenting your life over the year — you’ll be able to look back and see at least one clue as to what you did on any particular day. Everyone I’ve read about or talked to that has gotten involved in this has said how wonderful it was in developing their photographic skills.

Which makes perfect sense, really. Think about the things you normally identify yourself as really good at. I’m really good at playing piano; I’ve played for 20 years and while I don’t play every day anymore, I did play every day for nearly 12 of those years. I’m pretty good at designing web sites; I can’t say I design a new one every day, but every time I *do* design one I get better.

Photography is no different. Common wisdom says that you need 10,000 hours — about 10 years — of experience before you’re an expert at something. All the photo pros will tell you: you just have to practice. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. I’ve been trying my hand at serious photography for a year now, and I didn’t exactly shoot every day (not by a long shot), but I’m still amazed by how far I’ve come just with that little bit of experience. If I successfully execute Project 365, I’ll have squeezed (I estimate) four to five times as much photography time in this coming year as I did in my first year.

Photo by Derrick Diemont

It’s a little daunting to think about — taking a decent picture every single day for a year. Especially since I’m still a little self-conscious whenever I have my giant DSLR (and tripod) out in public. But I’m going to get over that, and I’m going to get over that bad feeling of “there’s nothing interesting to take a picture of.” Seriously, that really bums me out. But what this project will force me to do is not dwell on such thoughts, but instead think creatively and make a photographic opportunity. Not every day is going to be a great photo, I’m sure — I’m not going to be able to be as selective as I normally would be in terms of what I post online — but it will keep me honest and keep me going.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

Every one of my Project 365 photos will be in my Flickr photostream tagged with “project365″.

I’m coming up on one year of my foray into “real” photography (that is, putting some effort into my shots rather than just random point-and-shoot), and I wanted to share an experience I had that demonstrated the importance of spending quality time post-processing your photos. One of my pictures that got little attention at first started getting a lot more looks, comments, group invites, and awards once I knew what I was doing in post and spent some time tweaking it.

Until relatively recently, I hadn’t really done much post-processing work — I’d pull the shots off my memory card, maybe do a little tweaking to the exposure if I had under- or over-exposed, maybe crop a little, but that was about it. But as I’ve spent more time trying to learn about photography, both from the pros and from some talented friends, I realized in addition to developing “the eye” in the field, I needed to be developing my skills back at my desk, long after the shot. I have plenty of experience designing user interfaces for web sites, but little with enhancing photographs. Once I started putting some effort into post, some of my shots really started to pop much more than they used to. One great example of this is my mossy ravine photograph.

I took this shot at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana on a cool and overcast October morning. My friend Chris and I had gone there to just hike a bit and see if there were any good photographic opportunities. Given the disgusting light provided by the patchy overcast sky, there weren’t many. Still, I fired away and sifted through them all when I got home.

I thought the perspective on this particular shot was kind of cool, with the mossy wall rising on the left, the creek leading the eye through the ravine ahead, and the stairs providing evidence of humanity. So I tweaked it just a touch like I usually did, and posted it to Flickr. Chris and Kyle commented on it, and that was about the end of it.

Mossy ravine (original) - no editing

Mossy Ravine (first edit)

When I revisited it last week, some months after it was shot, I was armed with some new filters and techniques. I cropped it down some more to balance the leading lines in the shot in a more pleasing way. I played with the color curves and pumped up the greens and oranges to play up the vegetation. I applied a subtle gradient filter to the blown-out overcast sky area between the trees overhead, to give that area a touch of color. And finally, I applied a soft-focus filter to give everything just the slightest hint of a glow, which provides for a more damp, lush feel to the scene.

Mossy Ravine (final)

As soon as I uploaded the replacement, the photo got invited into several nature and geology groups on Flickr, was favorited by a few people, and got a number of comments. I still don’t think it’s a great photo, merely a good one, and it’s far from my most popular shot on Flickr, but it just goes to show you how much of a difference some decent post-processing can make. It went from dull and “meh” to “Nice shot!” and lots more views.

Why didn’t I do this earlier? Well, somewhere I got it into my head that you should be getting the shot you want right out of the camera, and not manipulating it too much afterward. I probably spent too much time listening to photojournalists, for whom this is true (and essential), but I realized that for everyone else that “rule” is like telling a musician he has to record all the tracks in one take and can’t do any editing before the album gets pressed. Most of us are trying to tell a story or convey a feeling or impress a sensation with our photographs, and Photoshop — or whatever — is just one of the tools used to do that. Especially when you shoot in RAW, and the data comes out of the camera without any sort of color processing or enhancement, it’s pretty seldom that a shot can’t be improved without at least a little bit of careful post.

For me, seeing other photographers’ before and after images demonstrated the degree to which post-processing could impact the power and presence of a photo. Since I started paying more attention to what I do in post, I’ve started getting a lot more “Wow”s and “Cool”s than I used to with some of my photos. It’s clearly an essential part of artistic photography, so I recommend spending some time getting to know more than just the brightness and contrast sliders in your favorite photo editing application.

Gallery: Mossy Ravine

These three images show the original shot, the first one I posted to Flickr, and now the final product.

If there’s one technical aspect of photography that causes more confusion for beginners than any other, it’s probably aperture. I feel like I explain it a lot, and just this week a friend was asking about a lens purchase and the subject came up again; I thought it was about time to write a quick post on the subject.

The aperture affects how much light is able to reach the camera’s sensor. There’s a bladed diaphragm inside the lens that expands and contracts, depending on how you’re using the camera and what settings you’ve chosen, to allow more or less light in. The aperture is expressed as “f/2.8″ or “f/4″.

What do those numbers mean? The smaller the number, the larger the aperture (meaning more light gets in). That may seem confusing until you think of the expression as a fraction. 1/2.8 is greater than 1/4 is greater than 1/8. Lenses specifications are described in the maximum aperture the lens can achieve — e.g., the Nikon 50mm AF-S f/1.4 can “open up” to f/1.4, which is very wide. Minimum apertures are rarely a concern; that 50mm Nikon can “stop down” to f/16. Cheaper zoom lenses, like the kit lens that came with my Nikon D40, sometimes have variable minimum apertures. For example, my 18-55mm lens is rated as “f/3.5-5.6″. That means that at 18mm it can open up to f/3.5, and as you extend through the zoom range up to 55mm you eventually can’t open it any wider than f/5.6.

So what good is having a wide f/2.8 or f/1.4 aperture? The first and most obvious is the advantage of having more light reach your camera sensor. That means you can use faster shutter speeds than at a lesser aperture in the same lighting conditions; with a smaller aperture, the camera has to hold the shutter open longer in order to gather enough light to make a meaningful image, and/or boost the ISO sensitivity.

Diagram of relative aperture areas

Then there’s bokeh, the other major effect of aperture. Bokeh is the blurring of the background in your photo. There are varying degrees and quality of bokeh depending on the lens used and other factors, but one of the main ways to get a richer, more blurry bokeh is to use a wider aperture. The larger the aperture, the more narrow your depth of field. The DoF is the range at which your subject is in focus; for example, if your aperture and focus is set such that anything between 12 and 14 feet away from you is more or less in focus, then your DoF is 2 feet. The cutoff isn’t instant, of course, but falls off into blur the farther you go outside the DoF area. So with a f/1.4 lens opened all the way up, your DoF is extremely narrow; if you try to take a picture of someone’s face, you could potentially have their eyes in focus but not the tip of their nose or their ears.

So aperture affects light-gathering ability and your depth-of-field. What else? The price! Yes, it’s not technically a photographic trait, but maximum aperture more than anything else seems to affect the price of a lens. Take the two zooms I cited above, for example. The “consumer” zoom, the Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 VR, costs about $200. Works great as long as there’s plenty of light. The “pro” zoom, however — the 70-200mm f/2.8 — is around $1600. Yes, it also has some higher quality glass and is weather-sealed, but the biggest spec difference you’re going to see when going from consumer to pro gear is a wider maximum aperture.

Building wide, constant-aperture zooms is an expensive endeavor. As such, many amateurs or casual photographers will instead buy a fast prime — fixed focal length — lens. There are numerous popular 50mm f/1.4 and f/1.8 lenses available for every SLR platform. I’m personally looking forward to the new high-end Nikon 50mm AF-S f/1.4, which with its 8 elements and 9 blades should be the best-performing “nifty fifty” ever made. It will also, being an AF-S lens, autofocus on the affordable Nikon D40, D40x, and D60 cameras. Having f/1.4 available to me should allow me to photograph in all but the darkest of situations without using any flash.

Make sense? Right. As clear as mud.

Now that I’ve gotten into photography a little bit, I tend to pay more attention to how other people use their cameras. There’s two things that I repeatedly see which drive me up the wall: pointless use of flash, and that dang beeping noise.

Let’s start with the beeping. On most cameras, this will occur either when the camera focuses or when you release the shutter — or both. In my opinion, this feature is pretty unnecessary for most people, because there are visual confirmations for both of these actions (and I do hope you’re looking at your camera when you use it!). The cacophony of beeps is just plain annoying when you’ve got several people all trying to focus and snap pictures all at the same time. It’s downright rude when you’re in a quiet setting — like some sort of performance, gallery, etc. People seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that their camera is making loud, rude noises while someone is performing a solo or whatever. There is a simple on-off setting for this…please, consider turning it off.

The second item of photography etiquette on today’s agenda is the use of flash. Most people buy their point-and-shoot cameras and then never take it off the Auto Flash function. This works fine for many situations, but cameras are still kind of stupid about when to use flash. I remember watching diving at the Beijing Olympics a couple months ago, for example, and the Water Cube announcers repeatedly asked spectators not to use flash. Yet, every single time someone went off the diving board, hundreds of flash bulbs popped from the stands.

My favorite part about this was not only that it was rude and inconsiderate to the divers, but the fans were hundreds of feet away! Most P&S flashes are only good to around 30 feet, maybe. Not to mention that the pool was lit extremely well, but the distance made the use of flash pointless anyway. The cameras got confused because the stands were a bit darker than the pool area, and so they figured they’d expose for the foreground and fired up the flash. This is why, when you’re in the stands for a sporting event and snap a picture with flash, the best part of the picture is of the guy’s head right in front of you.

So, people need to learn how to turn two things off: the focus/shot confirmation beep (and the stupid fake “shutter” sounds when the picture is taken), and the auto flash. Camera makers know that people should be able to quickly turn off their flash, and that’s why most of them make it available within just one or two button presses. On the back of my point-and-shoot, I just press the flash button (the lightning bolt) once and the flash gets shut off. So please learn how to do it on yours, be aware of when you should turn it off, and practice some basic photography etiquette.

One marketing ploy that most consumers have almost universally bought into is that the more megapixels a digital camera has, the better it is. This is one of the biggest misconceptions in the entire consumer electronics industry, possibly second only to the belief that a $140 Monster cable will make your audio signal sound better than a $12 cable (or a coat hanger). The first thing out of someone’s mouth when you show them a new camera is often “How many megapixels is it?” More megapixels not only don’t make for a better camera than one with less MP, but it may actually make it worse. Before anyone starts shopping for cameras this holiday season, I want to make sure everyone’s aware of the Megapixel Myth.

A huge factor in the quality of digital photos is the quality and size of the digital sensor inside the camera and how much light it is able to absorb. You’ve all seen grainy, noisy digital photos, especially in darker shots — that’s the sign of a sensor struggling to take in enough light to expose the photo. The sensor is a rectangular device that is divided into a pixel grid — if you have a 4 MP camera, then you’ve got about 4 million individual photo-sensitive cells on that sensor. If you then cram 8 MP onto that same sensor, with the same physical dimensions, then more of the surface is divisions, or “walls”, than light-gathering pixels. Think of it like an ice cube tray. If you have a tray that normally has 20 cubes, and then subdivide it so it can handle 40 smaller cubes, your total volume of water drops because of the extra space that the divider walls take up.

Sensors in the typical compact consumer camera can only get so big and still fit in the case. So all other things being equal — same physical sensor size, same sensitivity, etc — a lower megapixel camera will perform better in low-light situations where every possible photon of light must be absorbed. DSLR cameras have much larger sensor sizes, and so have much larger photo-sensitive cells. This is one reason why a DSLR will always outperform a point-and-shoot that has the same MP rating — the photo cells are bigger, they can absorb more light, which means less noise in low-light situations and faster shutter speeds across the board.

Now of course as technology improves, sensors get better and better at absorbing light from small photo cells, so a lower MP camera is not automatically better or more sensitive to light. But the important point here is that higher MP does not mean you’re going to get a better image.

So I started looking at Nikons and Canons, and it came down to the Nikon D40, Nikon D40x, or the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I knew about the new Nikon D60 (which replaces the D40x), but it didn’t have anything I wanted over the others. So I read and read and read reviews and comparisons and pontifications by professional photographers, and I settled on the 6 megapixel Nikon D40 over my other two finalists (which were both 10MP) because with a lower megapixel rating it’s A) less expensive; B) more sensitive to light because fewer pixels are covering the same size sensor; and C) Megapixels don’t matter unless you’re making prints, and with 6MP I can still make ridiculous sizes like 24″ prints or something.

It was so tempting to go for the ones with more megapixels, but after reading stuff like this from real photographers, lauding the D40 and dispelling the megapixel myth, I realized I needed to get out of the point-and-shoot “more megapixels!” marketing mentality and focus on the other stuff that really matters.
That Ken Rockwell guy I just linked to, for example, has dozens of ridiculously expensive cameras and still uses his D40 more than anything — because it shoots with fantastic quality in almost all situations, is lightweight, and it very easy to use. I found that the Nikon D-series in general has some of the best in-camera image processing, comes with a fantastic kit lens to begin with and has very affordable quality consumer-grade lenses (the Canons tend to be more expensive for good lenses, it seems). I’ll be the first to admit I am totally new to SLR photography, but that’s what I based my decisions on. So I feel like I made a smart choice, and even though I was initially wooed by all the features ticked by the Olympus (LCD live view, image stabilization, etc), I’m glad I did my research so I was able to hone in on what’s really important. Saved me some money too.

The D40 is really small for a DSLR and feels great in my hands. Except for the Olympus E410, I think it is *the* smallest DSLR you can get. It just feels great, and there’s so much stuff to learn. Coming from an older-than-dirt Canon Digital Elph 2.1 MP point-and-shoot that tended to take dark, dingy pictures (hey, it was more than 7 years old…it had its day), I can’t wait until I’m some level of competent with my new D40. I believe I’m actually going to enjoy taking photos again!

• Nikon D40 reviews: Basic, Intermediate, Mind-blowingly detailed
• Buy the Nikon D40

Here’s a few of my first shots…all indoors and nothing particularly exciting, because it’s dark and raining outside, but I really wanted to try it out. I still have a lot to learn. Click on the photo to advance or hover over the caption area to see the thumbnails. Click the “Link” text for a larger version (in a popup).