Hey Doc

Have you ever come across something that makes you wonder, "How did they do that ?" I browse lots of photo web sites. I have seen some photos that just don't look like regular photos, more like a painting or illustration. You know they are digitally processed but how did they do that ? Here is the answer - High Dynamic Range. Have you ever experience this before while taking a picture ? The lighting looks good, it was sunny but the photo was either over-exposed or under expose in parts of the picture. The automatic response was, my exposure was off or the light meter was wrong. The real reason was the limitation of the camera, film or digital. It can not record with that high of contrast range. A human eye can distinguish a contrast of 10,000 to 1 in one view, the best of the camera can record is only 1/10 of the eyes, 1000 to 1. So what can we do ?
There are many software on the market that can "add" the dynamic range into your photos by combining multiple photos with different exposure into the final picture. So you set the exposure for the lightest and the darkest of your scene in 3 to 5 steps then Let he software do the work. Good, then what is the painting and illustration like about ? Somehow during the HDR process, the photo took on a different look then the real. I am not sure why but I really like this effect. Although this does not happen to all photos all the time. I guess there is other elements in the play. The example I am showing is a comparison of what would look like for a normal single exposure photo (left) and the result of a HDR photo, combined with 5 photos. (right). There is a whole web page dedicated to this technique. This is my favor photo. I can't wait to try this at the Hearst Castle.
My recent work load had decressed to a comfortable level. We are not out of the fire fighting mode yet, just fewer incidents right now. Our next big project is to setup a showcase demo so we can start showing the protential customers what our system can do in a real world.