I bought my first digital (point and shoot) camera in the mid-1990's. At that time, it looked like digital photography might be a fun, hobby-like way to shoot "instant" images and share them on the WWW. Typical equipment took 1 megapixel, jpg images which were suitable for display on 72 ppi computer monitors and perhaps for snapshot-sized prints on color inkjet printers.

But at that time, it didn't appear to me that it was "ready for prime time" for serious photography. I was still shooting color transparency film and letting Kodak, or other labs do my printing. In the back of my mind, I always wanted the ability to do my own printing, intrinsically understanding that there was a fair amount of "manipulating" that could be done to tease the most out of the raw material that came out of the camera. At that time, I was open-minded enough to believe (and maybe dream) that someday the ability to digitally work my own captures would come to the serious photographer at affordable prices. Little did I know just how true this would be!

In the ensuing 10-year period, digital photography advanced by light years. By the mid 2000's I had a 6mp DSLR and by 2006, a 12 mp DSLR (small by today's standards). I was finally able, thanks to the good folks at Adobe, to have my own "darkroom." But that was only the beginning.

In the Winter of 2008, I attended a John Shaw seminar in which he spent an hour on HDR imagery. I had read about it previously, but really didn't appreciate it. Later that fall, I purposely took some "over and under" (exposure) shots to try my hand at HDR. In Winter of 2009, I read a couple books on HDRI and was ready to try my hand.

In technical terms, the full dynamic range of exposure in a true HDR image cannot be displayed on either a computer monitor or in print. This is because we simply do not have the technology to display what the human eye can see in nature (yet). Nor do we have digital capture sensors that will capture that kind of dynamic range (yett -- from what I read, they are coming).

I have been using the Photomatix software to blend a series of exposures to create the HDRI file. Then, using its "tone mapping" capability, I have created from the HDRI, a new file (generally saved as a TIFF image). The range of exposure which can be "tweaked" appears to be almost limitless.

For my own tastes, which lean toward photographic, I have tried not to go overboard and get an unrealistic look to the photo. Rather, what I am striving for is to try to recreate what my eyes saw. I hope you find these images (in the HDRI Gallery) interesting. I will continue to shoot some images on my photo trips with the idea that I will bring them home and process them as HDRI.