hdr church

i had a go at 'hdr' photography today.... i was really disappointed..... can anyone advise me on the best way to take hdr? i took one photo in RAW for this and converted it in photoshop into 5 images with varying degrees of exposure. it just looks a bit 'bland' to me. also i know its a bit on the 'wonky' side, i had a group of people behind me and a big board to my right so im a bit off centre. i notice that nobody has posted in this topic recently. is it because, like me, you are a bit nervous of criticism? LOL!! oh, and i used iso of i think 500. maybe that was too high?

I don't really know how t o help you Fee, maybe it is not quite sharp enough. I have never tried hdr.

Fee,

I 'think' the issue is you took one photo and converted it. From my limited knowledge of HDR its best to take three (or more) shots , using bracketing, to put through the HDR facility on CS2 or CS3.

But taking different shots the exposure will be truely different as opposed to digitally different in the method you chose.

I have played around with HDR using the method I suggest with some.......goodish results.

John

thanks guys!
this is one that i took with using 3 different shots, maybe it is a little better?

John is correct HDR is three different exposure of the same shot: 1-over exposed to get the shadows, 1-under exposed to get the highlights and 1-exposed correctly to get main image. Then you put them together in PS using the program plugin HDR and it will combine the images to give an overall perfectly exposed image.

The image you are using does not have all the elements you need for HDR, you need a lot of sun with harsh highlights and dark shadows for HDR to truly work.

That being said, I like the image the comp and angle work well with the elements there. I like the effect you got using HDR.

thanks, i will keep practising. i actually used the 'photomatix' hdr program to process them.