I recently planned to meet with  Nick Palmieri at Sandy Hook in order to photograph some HDR images. The weather tried to throw us a curveball that day and heavy storms were now being predicted for that afternoon. We all decided we would take a chance and see if we could manage to  make some images before the storm rolled in. My husband Anthony decided to come along for the ride and he was as usual great company.

Although we had all been to Sandy Hook on a number of occasions in the past and know the area quite well, we wanted to check out the best possible locations for the upcoming January, 2011 Roamin with Roman Photo Tours “HDR From Capture to Ouptput” workshop,  I will be co-leading.

HDR is short for high dynamic range photographs. In scenes where the contrast exceeds what the camera is able to record with a single exposure, you make multiple exposures at various shutter speeds in order to capture the entire tonal range of the scene. The various exposures are then digitally toned mapped or merged if you will,  using the software of your preference. I have been using Photomatix  for several years now. I recently have used the new and improved Tone Mapping in Photoshop CS5 and as of the end of last week, the newly released Nik HDR Efex Pro software.

Since we were racing with the thunderstorms that we could see were rapidly approaching, we rushed from one area to the next capturing our images. Sandy Hook offers a vast assortment of subjects that lend themselves to the making of some nice HDR images.

Once we got to the pulse racing location, we all managed to make some images and a minute or two later the down pour began. The magnitude of the storm was worse  than we had anticipated, but we all went back home with smiles on our faces and happy we did beat the storm after all.