My First HDR-esque Photo Attempt

Like many people I have been intrigued with HDR photography. I just think some of the HDR shots take a good photo and just make it pop. The effects run from subtle to dramatic so I thought I'd try my hand at it.

What is HDR photography. The best way to explain it is to show examples but basically you take multiple shots of the subject. One at "normal" exposure, one under-exposed and one over-exposed. You then take parts of each exposure to create a best-of-the-best image. Here is how I created my first attempt.

My camera has a bracketed shooting option which takes three quick shots in succession at three aperture settings. I shot Paw-Paws old ford truck as a test. Here are the three images.
PhotoShop has an HDR option that combines the images but I decided to simply make the three images into layers in PhotoShop file; Darkest to lightest, bottom to top. I then used a layer mask to erase parts of each layer to reveal a "better" portion from another layer.
As you can see, the grass at the bottom, the parts behind the letter "F" and the field behind the truck are all properly exposed. None of the three source photos had all those pieces correct. The final composite is not dramatically different than the medium exposure source image - it's just a little better all over.

Once you have a good composite you can take the image and do all sorts of things in PhotoShop. For the image above I think I turned up the contast, turned down the brightness and then I added some "noise" to make it a bit grainy. Lots of options once you get a good composite image.

Poster edges

60% Grayscale

100% Grayscale high contrast

Not bad for a first attempt. I think I'll try some more of these.