My First High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images

I was too lazy to leave my front yard, so the photo is not impressive at all, but I'm just starting to get my feet wet. There's so much to learn, from picking the right shot to tweaking the final image in Photomatix.

Using Photomatix, I increased the saturation of the first image. The image below was created using the default settings. Update: Although the bottom image doesn't pop and is frankly not very good, it is a very close approximation of what my eyes perceived. That in itself is amazing to me.

Here's how I did it: I put my camera on a tripod, set it to aperture priority mode and shot seven photos from -3 EV to +3 EV. Clarification: I put the camera into aperture priority mode, so that the aperture and hence the depth of field remained constant. I then used Photomatix 3.0 to adjust the saturation (first image only) and combine the seven images. This was my first time using Photomatix, but thanks to this excellent tutorial, I was able to create these HDR images quickly. Here are the seven original photos: This is fun stuff. I look forward to lugging around my camera and tripod and creating more HDR images.