Techniques That Amateurs Must Try

Photography as a whole might seem very consolidated in one word, but the genres and applications of photography is very vast. Photography does not mean only taking pictures but there are many things to know and consider before beginning with photography as a hobby, or if looking forward to taking it as a profession. In a common note, those who know tit bits about photography will know about fashion, editorial, photojournalism, wildlife, wedding and documentary styles of photography. Similarly there are many techniques that one must attempt before selecting a genre and sticking to it. It’s all about practice and how much one shoots to polish his/her skills in photography. So those who are looking forward to expanding their photographic knowledge and skills, we have discussed a few techniques that one must try.

- Mrinmoy Choudhury

HDR PHOTOGRAPHY

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Dynamic range is nothing but the difference between the lightest light and the darkest dark that you capture in an image. Once your subject exceeds the camera’s dynamic range, it becomes difficult for the camera to hold all the details in the highlights and the shadows. An HDR image is commonly made by taking three photos of the same scene, each with different shutter speeds. The result is an underexposed, rightly exposed and an overexposed image. A software processing is then required to combine all the three images to bring in the details of the shadows and highlights. HDR photography has its applications and several limitations as well. Landscapes and interior photographs look good in HDR as they have a lot of details in the shadows and highlights. Moreover, it is not always possible to get all the details correctly in a single exposure. HDR images have to be done very carefully as a wrong processing of the images can give them a very saturated and unreal look making it worse. There are several software available in the market for HDR processing and each one of them is aimed towards making unreal looking HDR images. If done correctly HDR images can look wonderful however there are limitations, for example, HDR done on human portraits do not always look too impressive.

LONG EXPOSURE

If you ask what long exposure is, this is the definition: long-exposure, time exposure, or slow-shutter photography involves using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring the moving elements. Long-exposure photography captures one element that conventional photography does not: time.