Last week, I introduced HDR to my digital photography class. To present a working example, I chose to use a photo of the Subway Cafe that I shot six years ago. Fortunately for me, it’s one of the few photos from my past where I kept all of the originals I shot, so it gave me an opportunity to play around using techniques that I didn’t really know of back then.

Here’s the 2003 version, which was composed of two exposures.

Here’s the version I did this year (2009). It’s composed of three exposures. I used an underexposed version of the sign, added some unsharp masking to the bricks, did some Shadow/Highlight to the sky, and did a bit of dodging and burning with my Cintiq.

As a photographer, it’s frustrating to realize how many of my pieces I’ve done in the past that could be revisited and improved upon–furthermore, how many that could have been revisited had I not saved over the files. Nowadays, I make a point to save all of the originals.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Harrisburg, photography, photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.