Photo from Death Valley

I explored Death Valley for a few days right before Photoshop World. The photo above was taken in an area known as Bad Water. That's Randy Van Duinen posing under the 119° sun.

This is a three-shot HDR image that has been further processed in Photoshop. Here's what the image would have looked like if I used a single shot and processed it with default settings in Camera Raw:

If you'd like to learn how to transform your images by incorporating High Dynamic Range imaging (that's what I used), then consider taking my new on-line course on HDR. Use "Ben" as a coupon code to receive a 15% discount.

Comments

[Dan Mitchell]

Hi:

Hope it wasn't one of you who scrawled that message on the desert floor...

Or, at a minimum, you obliterated traces of it after you took the shot.

Take care,

Dan

[SuzyR]

Death Valley ... I'm envious (was there several years ago).

Question: Is it possible to scan old film images in such a way so as to be able to transform them using HDR? Maybe scan a photo 3 or 4 times using different brighness settings and then process them using HDR?

[Ben Willmore]

Dan,

I ran across the message on the desert floor, took the photo and walked on... I had nothing to do with the message's creation.

Suzy,

I haven't tried HDR on scanned images... you could do it if they were a bracket of different exposures just like you would shoot digitally. You'd have to experiment to see what you'd get with a bracket of scanning settings of a single piece of film.. I've never tried that.

-Ben

[SuzyR]

Thank you, Ben, for replying. On Sept. 21 (under your "Photo from Death Valley") I left a comment re my experiment using one photo to produce a "fake" HDR image in PhotoMatrix. It turned out surprisingly well, so I suspect the same would work on a scanned image. I'll try it & see what happens. I am very much enjoying your "on the road" reports and your photos. Thanks again.