Looking back at previous work for potential HDR images, this wide angle view of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC presented itself. When I was visiting the cathedral last summer, HDR photography wasn’t something I had looked at much, if at all. But might I be able to make use of it never the less? I didn’t have the bracketed exposures typical of HDR photography here. But there are other ways to proceed. I almost always shoot with in my camera’s raw mode, saving the data from the sensor for later processing, rather than letting the camera change it directly into a .jpg file. Because this captures a wider dynamic range than a .jpg normally would contain, but still less than the bracketed exposure method, there are still ways to use the single raw image in HDR processing. I used Aperture to artificially create the brackets by changing the exposure adjustment, and then proceeded to process in Photomatix. Importing the result into Photoshop, I converted the photograph from color to black and white, and adjusted the contrast. Here, I had a black and white in mind, so I went much further with Photomatix than I would for a color image, and further adjusted in Photoshop to make it a fairly high contrast image.  I’m quite pleased with the result.  Clicking on the photo below will take you to it’s place in my photo galleries, where you should be able to see it in a larger version.

Washington National Cathedral in HDR

Collection: HDR