P#21: A Dramatic Shot of the Brooklyn Bridge

Setting the Scene

Bryan Peterson: More than two things are going on in this picture. As I stood there in Brooklyn looking across at Manhattan through the Brooklyn Bridge, I thought to myself, "I'm standing in these rocks and clearly, if I got down really low, I should see nothing but rocks in the foreground with no evidence of a river." (click the image for a larger version)

Sure enough, I actually dug out a small area of about three inches deep moving rocks aside to put the camera down low so it's clearly at rock level. As I mentioned, when using the wide angle, I'm at f22. That's a 12-24mm lens at the 15mm mark. My focus is set at three feet.

That gives me a depth of field of exacting sharpness from roughly two feet to infinity, but it was a really crappy day. By that I mean it was late afternoon and it was strongly backlit. I've always enjoyed this wonderful program called Photomatix, which is this HDR high dynamic range program that is so darn easy to use.

[Editor's Note: To find out more about HDR (what it is, what it does and how to do it) please see Tony Sweet's interview on High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography which starts here.]

You literally load the images up. In this case, I took seven different exposures to cover the dynamic range of that scene before me -- loaded all seven into Photomatix and did what everybody should do. I got up to have a cup of coffee because the computer does all the work for you.

You come back in about six minutes, and there's your picture with the entire range of perfect exposure in that entire scene. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool. Again, I do want to stress that this is not a creative exposure in terms of what HDR does. That creativity of exposure is still going to be and will always remain the photographer's responsibility.

By that I mean this... I personally set the lens at f22. I personally set the focus to three feet, which in turn guaranteed me the depth of field that I was wanting. What HDR Soft, which is the name of the program, did is that it simply took all seven of those exposures and combined them into a single exposure showing that entire dynamic range.

This is important to note when we talk about seven different exposures. I want to express that at no single time in that seven stop range did I mess with my focus or my aperture choice. It was all shutter speed.

A correct exposure at that particular scene based on what the camera wanted me to do in aperture priority, it was telling me, "If you're going to be at f22, I can take this picture at 1/60th of a second." Of course I didn't want to do that. I wanted to take that picture, yes, but I wanted to take three more on the plus side and three more on the minus side.

With the camera still in aperture priority, I think we set it up for an auto exposure bracket at plus three to minus three, and with the cable release, fired the shutter release seven times to get not only f22 at 1/60th, but also f22 at 1/30th, 1/15th, and 1/8th, which are all overexposed exposures, as well as 1/125th, 1/250th, and 1/500th which those three represent the three underexposures.

Those combined with the "correct" exposure of 1/60th, and they were all souped up in Photomatix software and that single image resulted.

HDR really opens up a whole new world of exposure, that's for sure. I've made a couple of bets with people, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if we don't see this embedded in the chips of some of the more high-end digital cameras out there.

Nikon currently has a camera that does, for example, multiple exposures. Once you're done, it will combine all those images into a single shot all in camera. It's not HDR by any means.

But the fact that they're sort of close to doing that tells me that certainly in a couple of years we'll see that embedded in most cameras so you can sit there and fire off a five stop exposure and just wait a few minutes, and sure enough, there's your single exposure of the entire range of light.

To Sum Up

This picture of the Brooklyn Bridge didn't just happen. Sure, HDR software made it easier to create the photo, but Bryan Peterson's creativity and skill are what made the image what it is.