HDR look of Seattle

During my recent trip to Seattle, I’ve made my first serious attempt at taking HDR photos. Here’re the fruits of my labor!

First up’s the iconic Space needle:

Then we have the shot of downtown Seattle:

This is really one of the best situation to use HDR. It was raining the day I went up the Space Needle to take this shot. Without HDR, the shots were very flat since there’s no shadow from the sun. HDR really adds a lot of depth to the image. Better yet, the angry-looking clouds add a lot of drama to the otherwise regular shot as well!

The next one’s from the Seattle harbor:

This one was mildly challenging since the ship I was on was moving. Continuous shooting with AEB did the trick.

This was the cruise line (called Argosy) I took to tour the Seattle harbor. Again a tricky situation due to the moving water and ship. Photomatix did a great job in eliminating ghosting.

The famous Pike Place market! This showcase another strength of HDR in capturing high contrasting background sky and the neon logo.

Finally the famous original Starbucks at Pike Place! This is BY FAR the hardest HDR shot I took but the result is well worth the effort! The people were moving around and it took a lot of Photoshop touch up after rendering. Photomatix again managed to give me a great starting point by eliminating ghosting. It would’ve been impossible to capture so much details of the cafe interior with normal techniques!

I was overall a great experience and I really love the look of HDR. I don’t think this will be the last of my HDR work!