You’ll see the term HDR thrown around a lot when viewing various photography sites.  Even we throw it in a few of our marketing e-mails and on our website, so we thought it best to offer an explanation of what HDR is and how it can be used to produce a superior looking tour.

High Dynamic Range – A fancy name for photos that look good!

OK, so lets use an example.  You’re in a large room with large floor to ceiling windows looking out onto a great balcony.  Inside it’s fairly light, but there is also a lot of light streaming through the windows.  You take out your camera, and take a shot.  Chances are you’ll get one of two things happen.  1; you have a shot in which the windows are completely blown out with a white haze, but the inside looks OK, or 2; a shot in which the outside is clearly visible but inside the room is dark.

This happens because unlike your eyes, a camera cannot distinguish between extreme light and dark, and has to just deal with one at a time.  Most photographers will just find a happy medium and adjust the ISO, Exposure and aperture settings to deal with light the best he can.

HDR is a great way of dealing with this, giving great results.  It involves taking a number of shots of the same scene, but in varying exposures.  This will give you a range of shots, each one giving you a different exposure and showing the varying degrees of light in the room and outside.  These shots can then be merged together into a single photo giving you an end result that shows the highlights in the room as well as showing whats outside.

The above example is a very simplified version of what can be achieved.