Off topic - HDR Photography

Some of my fellow classmates were interested in finding out a little more about HDR Photography (my subject/topic/whatever for Project 2). Most photography (especially digital photography) has a dynamic range far below that of human eyesight. In other words, the difference between the brightest and darkest things is much more vast with our eyes than that with the photographic process. The result of this is that in many photos, the highlights and shadows frequently get clipped (blown out or crushed) unless lighting conditions are ideal. HDR is a process to reclaim them. To capture the perceived full values of a scene, several photos are taken of a subject at different exposure levels (otherwise identical). Some are more tuned to capturing details in the shadows, others show the same details better in the highlights. The HDR process allows you to combine the details and color from the optimized portion of each frame into a single image. Hi res version of the above photo here. Another example here. As with all software techniques, though, it's easy to over-do it. With HDR, resultant overdone files just look like fantasy photos, such as these.