HDR at the Military Aviation Museum, Virginia Beach, VA

Last June, I took this 3-shot HDR image of this beautifully restored Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk WWII Fighter at the Military Aviation Museum, Virginia Beach, VA. This particular shot came out extremely well I thought and really highlights how gorgeous these machines must have been coming off the assembly lines.



For those that are not keen on what HDR is, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. How it works (in a nutshell), is you take 3 or 5 images of the same subject matter using different light levels on each image. For example, the 1st shot will be at normal exposure, the 2nd will be one stop above normal, the 3rd, will be one stop below, etc, etc. (see images below). These images must all be exactly lined up with the others or the after effects will not be pleasant. Hence, using a tripod is (almost) mandatory.

With these 3 or 5 images, you then plug them into a software program called Photomatix Pro. Click "play", so to speak, and watch what happens. Photomatix Pro virtually merges all of these photos together for one result. That result is, an image who's dark areas have been lit up and who's bright areas have been darkened, giving you a real eye full of a picture now to look at. Once you have the Photomatix Pro result, you do a little more post processing using Photoshop and/or other various softwares out there and then voila, you get neat looking images like the one above.