Playing with HDR

I've become intrigued with HDR photography. I won't attempt to go into a long explanation of HDR, Google the term and you'll find more than you ever wanted to know. Basically, HDR (High Dynamic Range) allows you to capture a wide range of highlights and shadows in a scene. No matter how good your photographic skills and how expensive your camera, you won't be able to capture all the details in a scene with bright light and deep shadows. You can expose for the highlights, but you'll lose detail in the shadows. You can expose for the shadows and the highlights will be blown out. With HDR, you take multiple images of a scene at different exposure levels and then combine the images with software.

The photo below was exposed with a "normal" exposure reading in the camera.

Notice the lack of detail in the dark areas of the scene. The following is the same shot, but overexposed by 2 stops.

The bridge looks better, but the ice on the stream is blown out.

The next shot is intentionally underexposed by 2 stops.

Now the sky has nice exposure and the brightest parts of the stream have more detail. I know it's hard to see with these small web images, but you get the idea.

The three images were combined using Photomatix producing the image below. Now there is detail in all areas of the image.