HDR Church Photography
Although the photojournalistic nature of modern weddingphotography is mostly about up close emotion and personal stories, I love stepping back now and again to see the big picture. I take myself out of what everyone else is seeing to see what no one else gets to.
At the wedding I shot last weekend, I scurried up to the balcony to take a few wide shots of the gorgeous Saint Monica’s Catholic church in Santa Monica, California. There are so many different hues of light at different intensities in there that work together to caress the architecture, but cameras can’t capture such distant variations from highlights to shadows all in one shot.
Enter HDR — high dynamic range. That’s just a fancy process where you blend a few different photos at different exposures to take the best light from each.
The result showcases the detail and the light in almost surrealistic ways.
Saint Monica's Church in HDR
For reference, here’s one of the shots I used to create the HDR
composite. You can see that although the altar, candles, and purple
arches are nicely lit, the rest of the scene is too dark to tell what’s
going on.
A standard image with less range of light.