It’s by no means perfect, but I’m pretty excited about finally getting to create my first HDR image late last night.

I’ve been reading up on the topic for about a month now, and have since gotten the knack of auto-exposure bracketing my photos when shooting on a tripod. That turns out to be the easy part, however, as the miriad of software and processing options for creating HDR images is a little overwhelming, if not daunting.

There were a few good sessions on HDR during the Maui Photo Festival, including ones held by the very talented Maui resident Randy Jay Braun. For my course selection this year, however, I wasn’t quite ready to dive headlong into HDR, but I did sit in on a part of one of his sessions. Looking at his final output images, there seems to be no limit to the possibilities.

Source Images
In any case, below are the seven images I used for the image above. My exposure range was EV –3 to EV +3 in steps of 1 EV.

More to Come
I’m pretty excited because this is really only the beginning.  I’ve already taken a ton of bracketed exposures from our trip to Maui last week, so as I get the hang of this process for creating and tweaking HDR images, I’m off to the races.

All I need now is time.