The Ohanaware Weblog
Sam’s Complete Guide to HDR Photography: What Makes A Good HDR?
Today’s post is from my forthcoming guide: Sam’s Complete Guide to HDR Photography. It’s a short guide that aims to help everyone get started with the beautiful world of HDR Photography. I’m aiming to release it some time in November. If you’re interested in taking a look at it earlier, please use the contact us form, otherwise either check here or follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/sam_ohanaware)
What Make A Good HDR?
That’s a million dollar question, it’s like saying how I can make something that everyone will love. Truth be told, I cannot tell you. What I can tell you are things I’ve learnt that really help.
Is it a good image to begin with, there’s nothing worse than spending all that time making an HDR only to discover that it’s dead boring! Always think about how else can I take this photo? If you’re really stuck, default back to the thirds rule (if you can).

With the thirds rule, it’s fairly simple. Break the image into 3 equal sections and try to squeeze something interesting into each section, the example above, while not perfect contains something in each section.
When photographing landscape or buildings try to make sure that there is background detail, especially in the sky. You need just enough to make it interesting.
Contrasty scenes (where part is too bright and another part is too dark) work quite well as before and afters.
Night shots are really great when done in HDR.