The Shot

My wife and I were on a bus tour to Stonehenge while on vacation in the UK. We arrived in the afternoon after visiting Windsor and Bath. We were at Stonehenge for about 40 minutes. The light was pretty good but there were clouds rolling in.

As the clouds rolled in, my wife noticed a break in the clouds behind us. I ran around to the other side to get the light behind the stones. I had my 5D set to autobracket the exposures in 1-stop increments. normal, -1, +1. I laid down on the ground to get the horizon low in the shot and include the light at the top. (I'm sure the other tourists loved that!)

The Processing

The under exposed image captured the detail in the sky, the over-exposed image captured the details in the stones. The normal exposure got everything in-between.

I combined them in a program call Photomatix before doing the final edits in Photoshop CS2.

Now, some will say the HRD image wasn't what was really there. I disagree. The human eye can react to light very quickly. As I looked to the sky I could see the clouds and the light coming through. As I looked at the stones I could see all the details there.

For the photo to truly represent what I saw, the HDR treatment was the only way to go.

By looking at the original image you can see that the sky is washed out and stones are too dark. This is what all the other folks got. I can assure you they all think their photos didn't do the scene justice.

I do not like the overly garish HDR that some folks like. I use it as a tool to more accurately capture the true scene, not just what a single snap of the camera reveals

HDR helped me communicate the image from my mind's eye in way that could not be done with a single exposure.

This image was won a couple of awards and is one of my most popular prints.

David