HDR Photography

I had an assignment to take some HDR photographs around Salt Lake City, and I decided to try and see what happened when I took them during sunset, and after dusk.  All of these were taken around that time at night, and the Utah State Capitol building photograph is the only one of this set that was taken while the sun was still up.

In order to get the overexposed photographs of the Brigham Young statue, for example, I had to leave my shutter open for 15 seconds.  There is pretty minimal blurring in the plants, and I was surprised, since the wind decided to blow only after I released the shutter...

My professor swears by Photomatix, saying that it does a much better job at producing HDR photographs than Photoshop does.  I wholeheartedly disagree, and I have refrained from posting the versions produced by Photomatix, because I find them embarrassing.  Sure, some of my HDR photographs don't look like a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but had no intention of sending LSD addicts over the edge with my photographs.  I did blow the colors out in a few of them, so my professor would be happy, and posted a few here.  

In my opinion, HDR photography has its place, but it's more of a novelty, and should be used with discretion.  You can make stunning photographs, and accurately portray what the human eye can see in a way that cameras normally cannot.

I hope you enjoyed, and I think I'll post more HDR photographs in the future, if I find some cool things to take photos of.