Makena, Maui in HDR

I don’t often shoot in the middle of the day because the light is usually too harsh. If I meter for the highlights, the shadows go black, and if I meter for the shadows, the highlights blow out. I looked out the window yesterday though, and saw some nice colors down toward Makena, along with some great cloud cover mixed with the blue skies, and decided it might be a good day to do some HDR work.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, which is a process that involves taking several shots with different settings, exposing for everything from the highlights to the shadows, and using software to blend them all together. Adobe Photoshop has a Merge to HDR feature under File > Automate, but I prefer using Photomatix, as it gives me better control over the tone mapping of the final image.

I used a polarizer for the water and a 3-stop soft ND grad to accentuate the sky even further. I’ll go into more detail about how I actually produced the images in another post. For now, enjoy them and tell me what you think.

Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 5 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.

Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 4 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.

Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 5 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.

Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 6 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.

Tagged as: hawaii, hdr, makena, maui