35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
Applied carefully, High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) can create incredibly beautiful pictures which blur our sense of the difference between reality and illusion. In graphics HDR imaging is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows. This is usually achieved by modifying photos with image processing software for tone-mapping. And the results can be really incredible; in fact, many artists and designers come up with some pretty fancy results.
This post covers 35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures. Some of them might look surreal, too colorful, even magic or fake, but they are not — keep in mind that they’ve all been developed out of usual photos, and not a single image is an illustration.
Please notice:
- the selection isn’t supposed to be complete which is why we encourage you to post links to further excellent HDR images in the comments to this post;
- there is no ranking, all pictures have been selected due to their outstanding quality and excellent execution;
- you can explore further works of the designers and photographers we’ve featured below by browsing through their sets on Flickr;
- all screenshots are clickable and lead to the pages from which they’ve been taken;
- you might want to take a look at the article (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers we’ve published earlier.
Fantastic HDR Pictures
Sources and Further Resources
- New York City in HDR
- 20 Beautiful HDR Pictures
- HDRCreme.com
A growing collection of HDR-photos. - HDR Tutorial Round-Up
- Flickr: The Biggest Building in HDR
- HDR Japan
- HDR Video Tutorial
- High Dynamic Range Workshop
- HDR Flickr Pools: *atrium09 Flickr Set,
The HDR No Holds Barred Pool,
Best Of HDR Pictures Pool,
The Pure HDR Pool, The Biggest Building in HDR Pool, Quality HDR Pool, Stuckincostoms’ HDR Setse.
Shakyra
May 19th, 2010 3:43 pmOMGGGG I luv all of these so beautiful!!! I wish i was that good!
sangesh
May 26th, 2010 10:14 amhow to make such stunning HDR’s ? can we try HDR on portraits also?
Can any one suggest me how to work with tone mapping for HDR
i tried but… and how to take picture, what shoudl be the difference between teh pictures taht we combine for HDR
Joanna
June 10th, 2010 8:03 amNice photos! Check out 3D Rendering
cyh
June 12th, 2010 4:55 pmwhere where where where where where download????
Maike
June 17th, 2010 12:01 amVery nice pictures. Have a lokkt on our Wall decals an Wandtattoos
whitehotphoenix
June 19th, 2010 7:50 amThe people who see HDR as garish, vulgar, terrible, etc really have such closed minds. They can’t stretch their understanding far enough to see all forms of photography as ART. There’s lots of art I don’t like, starting with most of modern abstractism painting, but I certainly don’t trash the individual pieces or say the artist is bad. Sure there’s lots of bad HDR out there and it gives the people who really understand how to execute the technique properly a bad name. However, to say that HDR images are batch edited and mass-produced is simply showing your ignorance of the medium. I spend anywhere from 1 hour to several days producing a single HDR photograph, excluding the time it takes to plan and setup the shot. http://www.whitehotphoenix.com
Tess
June 25th, 2010 5:04 amI simply love HDR photography. Those photos are really gorgeous. The colours are amazing, they make the photos almost seem unreal. Thanks for this post.
Tess
kerstin
March 22nd, 2012 11:26 amthis ist not photographie. this is computer painting.
David
July 15th, 2010 2:05 pmmust get CS5!!! dang I’ve been trying HDR with CS4 and its just not doing it for me…
Dennis Mecham
August 16th, 2010 2:17 amI think HDR is a new and different medium. But they definitely have more of a contemporary CG look to them which seems rather fake compared to traditional film photography. So I think digital photography is becoming more computer art as a separate medium from photography. Of course I feel the same way about cinema captured digitally vs film cinematography. It’s a different medium entirely.
Taras Mykytyuk
August 16th, 2010 4:48 pmCongrats on a very nice post!
The photos are truly great and inspiring for ultra contrast tone-mapping. Waiting to see more. :)
By the way, if you want to see some other tone-mapping configurations for HDR technique visit next links.
True tone HDR
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/4685210776/
HDR + Effects
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/4886051886/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/4809882615/
HDR Panoramas
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/4814686520/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/4686151891/
Ultra contrast HDR
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/4518832620/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykita/3814779106/
Rachael
August 27th, 2010 10:53 amI personally love HDR, if not too overdone. The definition of “overdone” will change from person to person I guess.
I find it rather funny that people get so angry and offended by HDR. Like anything, if you don’t like it, don’t look. Spouting insults only shows your insecurity as a photographer in my opinion.
Mike
December 19th, 2010 8:12 amIt’s the lack of representation here and ignorance about the technique of HDR that has some uncomfortable.
It’s like having an article called “35 Beautiful American Artworks” and then only showing Andy Worhol paintings.
You’ll get a few that will start saying “American Artwork” sucks and then it snowballs.
pete
September 10th, 2010 4:05 pmhow about you guys go to Magnum and look at some REAL images, i.e. alex webb, trent parke, martin parr..go have look at robert frank, perhaps stephen dupont, all the guys & girls at oculi etc etc – true photographic talents, people to be admired..that is REAL photography, actual in camera talent, ya know, natural “photographic” ability..not overooked photoshop ability (see wedding industry).
like most HDR/overworked PS images, it is for photographers that cant shoot a good image “in the moment” but have to rely on 3 months of PS to make it an illustration.
this stuff is cheesy and kitchy.
Brett
September 12th, 2010 4:52 pmIf you’re interested in HDR, check out Trey Ratcliff of stuckincustoms.com for a good tutorial.
Mike
December 19th, 2010 2:28 pmWow,
Do you want the red pill or the green pill Neo?
http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/
Eugene
September 17th, 2010 3:00 pmI’ve been working with HDR for a couple of years now. The ones posted above are great, but I saw a few which had “mistakes” (notably, large halos around the edges).
A few of my own HDR images:
1) Ramsau, Germany: http://EruditeExpressions.com/archives/6297_1579073640/339197
2) New Yankee Stadium: http://EruditeExpressions.com/archives/6297_1579073640/338913
3) Incoming! http://EruditeExpressions.com/archives/6297_1579073640/320023
The rest are in this gallery:
http://EruditeExpressions.com/galleries/6297_1579073640/64948
Cheers,
Eugene
Stuart
September 20th, 2010 10:02 am“The people who see HDR as garish, vulgar, terrible, etc really have such closed minds”
Most people that have commented in the negative, have actually said that they can appreciate HDR, when used carefully. Personally, I do not like any of the above artwork, I prefer HDR when it is used to improve the dyanmic range to create realistic results that may not have been possible in one exposure. Yes, I do find most of them garish. 3, possible 4 of those pieces of art represent a realistic scene, but the rest do not as the colours are not natural. Taken as artwork, I can appreciate the time and effort involved, however just as with most of Damien Hurst’s work, I do not like the end result. Does this mean I have a closed mind? I don’t think so. It just means that I do not like the particular form of art
Mattia
October 10th, 2010 5:29 amhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/verona4me/sets/72157624203163479/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/verona4me/sets/72157624249358895/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/verona4me/sets/72157624401533319/
my photos
arie
October 13th, 2010 7:59 pmi like HDR…..^_^
Georges_M
October 15th, 2010 2:33 pmWhat about that one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkbQ2FwZvYk
Schedule
October 29th, 2010 5:03 pmMaybe you should edit the post title 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures – Smashing Magazine to something more specific for your subject you write. I liked the post still.
JJ
October 29th, 2010 11:09 pmHiya – having read all the comments, I agree with the possitive comments on HDR, i cannot agree with the negative, what a lot ot of tosh…. if it makes the creater happy and they get something from the creation and a good memory thats a great thing, for the moaners who nit pick about the little things, why!!! Pick up that camera and go create, never mind what negative people say, as we are ALL on the earth for a very short time.., enjoye every day, as soon as its past, you cannot get it back….
JJ
Mansoor
November 6th, 2010 10:41 pmThay are really amazing Photos.
jas limbu
November 16th, 2010 9:17 pmReally nice pictures.backside lights are more fantastic than picures.
I really apriciate DDR.
justaguy
November 20th, 2010 4:07 amlet me just say i just right now found out about hdr.
i came across it as one of the programs in my opera browser feeds. then read about it on wikipedia. then googled some hdr images.
on first impression im not impressed by hdr. i dont know much about photography and i’ve come across hdr images before and they just looked fake but couldnt say why. now i know the word for it–hdr.
the first hdr picture was of a friend of mine and it looked fake. it looked like a painting more than a photograph.
i clicked most of the hdr links here and imo they just dont look real. i play computer video games and these images look like images being developed for video games.
one thing that doesnt make games realistic is the images dont look “real”. they look like they were “created”. some of these pictures would look more real if they were just left natural. the high end games that look almost realistic look like they have “less hdr”.
pictures with hdr look cartoonish… or cgi-ish. yes they have more detail but just dont look realistic.
hdr images look like paintings. a painting will always be a painting and never be a photograph. thats what an hdr image looks like. a highly detailed painting.
Mike
December 19th, 2010 7:38 amHDR is a part of the process used in the photos above. “Real” HDR does not turn photos into modern art.
That said, I enjoy the photos above. Much like I do heavy rock music such as the band Disturbed. I just can’t take too much at any one time or I start getting queasy.
ah
November 22nd, 2010 5:30 amThese are some great shots, but I wish everyone would start calling these tone-mapped instead of HDR images. I get so annoyed trying to find real HDR images to use on some work projects these days because most of the searches will result in these tone-mapped shots. Real HDR images actually store the different stopped images; these are a blended version of that data.
Barrie
November 22nd, 2010 10:37 pmI have been using HDR for some time now. In my opinion it is simply a technique used to overcome the limitations of the camera. Cameras are not capable of recording the dynamic range we find in landscapes. With film we used graduated filters, dodging and burning etc. When used correctly we can reproduce pictures as we see them without having to accept the limitations.
Toby
November 28th, 2010 5:34 pmAlthough these pictures are quite impressive, i cannot get past the fact that this is detracting from the photography itself. Take away the HDR and many of these photos are quite plain
Ed
November 30th, 2010 6:00 amNot sure Fantastic applies to all of these, but thats HDR for you – easily spoils a shot.
Mike
December 19th, 2010 12:42 amTo call this HDR is like calling Facebook a chat room. Yes, these photos probably started out with some tone mapping. Done to enhance the Dynamic Range of the exposures from light to shadows. But after that, they got a heavy dose of Hyper-reality processing.
alon
January 3rd, 2011 12:39 pmamazing pics… gave me some great ideas for my own projects.
check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/alon_gutf/5321250904/
Rob
October 19th, 2011 4:09 pmmy eyes! my eyes! I can’t see anymore!
Dennis
January 18th, 2011 8:53 pmCan you do HDR with a film camera or only digital?
Glenn Springer
March 22nd, 2011 3:22 pmHDR was invented by Ansel Adams in 1939. He would expose for the shadows and then push the negative to bring out the details in the highlights. Adams was the master at dodge and burn techniques in the darkroom.
So yes, you can do it with film. Assuming you have phenomenal darkroom skills.
MoreOrLess
July 4th, 2011 12:47 amAnsel’s techniques seem much more like conventional digital photo editting to me, he was the one making decisions rather than leaving the work to a computer program.
Rob
October 19th, 2011 4:13 pmCan you edit negatives? Or merge them? Even if you could, wouldn’t you prefer to “merge to HDR” in photoshop and then play with the sliders?
ethink
January 23rd, 2011 9:39 pm不错
Ulises Bolivar
February 2nd, 2011 8:40 aminteresante xd
glenn
February 24th, 2011 9:41 amTo me, these all look fake… not like a real photograph at all. Question, when was the last time you actually saw, with your own eyes, anything that looks like these photos?
If you are honest, you will say you never saw anything like these, in person, with your own eyes… while they may seem beautiful to you they are not a photographic documentation of the actual scene…
Glenn Springer
March 22nd, 2011 10:24 amPeople certainly are polarized when it comes to HDR. Either they love it or they hate it, and within those camps there are those who disparage anything not realistic and others who are captivated by the surrealistic or more extreme treatments.
In my humble opinion, the HDR concept is a valid approach to rendering an artist’s (a photographer or pixel manipulator can be an artist) vision. The current software offerings have made creating HDR images available to the masses. There will be good ones and there will be bad ones and there will be ones you like and others you dislike.
An almost perfect analogue is typography. Everybody and his brother (or sister) who has MS Word has the tools to be a typographer. How few of them have the vision.
Ansel Adams was doing HDR’s in 1939. He compressed 7 or 8 zones of light values into the 5 or so that could be reproduced on paper. Are there those who don’t appreciate or like his work? Undoubtedly. Do some people think his technique was flawed? Sure. Does anyone doubt for a moment that he saw through an artist’s eyes? I don’t believe so.
Can one criticize technique? Absolutely. But is it fair to criticize an artist’s vision?
HDR is just a medium. An art form. HDR is to digital photography as oil or chalk-and-charcoal is to painting. I for one enjoy seeing the results when a real artist creates an HDR image. And I’m going to keep trying too. One day, maybe, some of my images will match what I see inside my head.
Architectural Renderings
March 29th, 2011 12:41 pmWOW. I stumbled across your site and the images are absolutely amazing! My favorite, by far, is the second one.
Nick
April 5th, 2011 1:23 amI flat out hate HDR photography.
Charles
April 13th, 2011 3:55 amThey all look weird, not natural, supernatural is what they are.
HDR does not mean that it has to look weird.
Just have a wider dynamic range between light and dark. A wider gray or color scale.
primo de la cruz
April 19th, 2011 6:57 amI used to work at a photofinishing lab, eight long years, seen tons of pictures. i tried something that’s in my head but i came close to what i want and then stretched the possible limits but that was analogue yesteryears. time have so much changed and technologies open a very wide portal of opportunities for us to express ourselves and maybe somehow, be understood. i like HDR no matter what. i can make it a photo if its the way i like and then i can make that same photo the way others will like it. it is on its own right, period. Oh, I love Ansel Adams. without him there wouldn’t be zone system. and without zone system simplified, we won’t understand HDR. thanks to people who think differently.
Harris
April 21st, 2011 9:36 amI’ve seen some good examples of HDR such as this one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tokyofashion/5637862353/sizes/o/
However, I find almost all the images here too Thomas Kinkake and kitschy looking. I never Photoshop my photos or use any color lenses / effects, so maybe that’s why I’m not so crazy about these. I like natural photos. HDR can be cool if applied sparingly. These are too over the top for my taste.
Liewilyn Baynosa
April 26th, 2011 5:57 amI randomly found out your site… This is one of the best collections of hdr images very nice… I really like that image of the barn it was very dramatic… AWESOME
Rick Shaw
April 27th, 2011 8:22 amThis collection should contain more variety from more photographers. — You should include some work from other photographers like, Eli Locardi for example. http://www.blamethemonkey.com has another good take on the HDR Process. He’s not the only one either. — Just please try to stop posting Over Cooked Photos
Hugh Pryor
May 2nd, 2011 4:18 amI find HDR leaves my eyes craving for some blackened or whited out space in a photograph. I think HDR is for people who suffer from horror vacui who need to see detail in every part of a picture. Should be used with extreme caution!
Ben Rubertas
May 3rd, 2011 7:43 amGlenn Springer is a genus
KALPANA
June 10th, 2011 10:56 pmOMG!!!!!!it iz totally awesome PICS……………
Bzzzz
June 11th, 2011 9:21 am@John Neel
“I think HDR is very rarely done right. There’s too many cartoonish-looking images out there that give HDR a bad name. Here is an example of what HDR images should look like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42823328@N08/”
Well, your example actually shows “cartoonish-looking images”. :)
Tom Still
June 11th, 2011 5:40 pmI think most of the people who don’t like these images are old burned out photographers who don’t like anything new.
harry diboulah
July 7th, 2011 8:55 pmomg, i find the distribution of light in those photographs HORRID ! looks like they are straight out of photomatix ! another horrible piece of software ! those photographs show bright where it shouldn’t be and dark where it shouldn’t be – and there’s sudden jumps from bright to dark and vice versa – they are not fantastic/realistic. they are just plain scary looking and way oversaturated !
my 2 cents.
but hey, tom likes em :-) and not everybody that doesn’t like them is old btw. that’s a lazy stereotype.
Evan Geer
July 17th, 2011 7:41 pmBeautiful Shots! I know that everyone has been saying something similar, but these images really capture both a subtlety and a eye catching pop. I hope to capture the same, but it is certainly easier said than done. Here are a few of my HDR images; I’ld love to hear people’s thoughts.
http://www.evangeer.com/gallery/h3ae5b71c#h3ae5b71c
http://www.evangeer.com/gallery/h3ae5b71c#hcc2a984
http://www.evangeer.com/gallery/h3ae5b71c#h220a600a
Thanks for sharing this post!
Daniel
July 20th, 2011 11:37 pmA fine example why HDR sucks. These photos look like they have been taken from a CGI movie, no feeling and 90% fake, and they look it. The editing seen here is very bad and, as usual, overdone to massive hights. Anyone who thinks HDR is good is either a bad photographer or just stupid, simple as. I just hope this kind of photography doesn’t gain popularity because it will be a disaster.
Peace.
MoreOrLess
July 23rd, 2011 12:48 amTo play off an old phase, nobody ever lost money underestimating americans lack of taste.
The most amusing thing for me is that for a technique called High Dramatic Range its main use seems to actually be producing very undramatic photographs. The idea that shadow can add character seems to have been lost to the drive for “everything brighter than everything else”.
Jayesh
July 21st, 2011 7:09 amVery nice photos.
emubird
July 22nd, 2011 1:27 ami love hdr photos. you can say even that i’m a hdr fanatic :P
but from all this photos, 2 (two) of them are hdr :| (the other are still great beautiful photos, don’t get me wrong; but they are NOT hdr!)
i really hate all this “artist” that brag with their “hdr” photos, but don’t know the first thing about what a hdr photo is supposed to be.
Harri
August 9th, 2011 7:33 pmNice Collection!
lk art
August 24th, 2011 5:25 amso good
家俊
September 12th, 2011 12:10 amvery good!
很好看, 这些图都很不错!
Vicki
September 13th, 2011 4:08 pmThis particular blog siteis quite interesting, keep creating awesome info.
mustafa
September 30th, 2011 3:25 amhi sir nice pics
Rob
October 19th, 2011 4:04 pmNice collection Vitaly. Unfortunately I do think that sometimes the artist goes a bit too far with the effects. Don’t get me wrong, HDR is fantastic, I absolutely love it and have been playing around with it myself, but the 3rd image from the bottom is a classic example, the halo around the tree is such a give-away that it’s HDR with detail up to the max.
“Use but don’t abuse” is my moto with HDR.
Brayan
November 14th, 2011 5:17 pmThe world before third world war; this is suitable for the Doom scenarios. It hurts my eyes; I think Hdr so awful is no good for health. ¿What is the idea?, light everywhere ¿For what?; ¿Where is the more important thing in the shot? doesn’t exist, all have the same importance. Conclusion: bad photography, worst photographers
joseph
March 24th, 2010 7:45 amhey my name is joseh yeah a smell like do-do its because i dont like taking showers sometimes my dog walks around naked and i love to take picture of it i have a xbox 360 but i use it for bad things i like to play Runescape yup i have no live
Jodok
February 13th, 2012 2:10 amHm, hm, hm. It starts with first line of the article: “Applied carefully, High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) can create incredibly beautiful pictures …”
Not one single image in the collection matches the term ‘carefully’. To my suffering eyes, this is an orgy of oversaturation and one of violent overprocessing as well.
We have that in audio-material too, called ‘lethal-compression’ there.
The dilemma begins, whenever the image leaves comprehensible perception. This is the moment it stops to be a photograph and starts to be a work of photography-based tweaking. Just because someone spends hours/days/weeks in a heroic attempt to thrash common limitations out of a medium … the result not necessarlily becomes art. But sure enough, it can result in art. Remember Chuck Close and all the artists, known as ‘photorealists’ back in the 70ies. This was photography-based painting, true HDR, if you may, and it had the same ‘hyperrealistic’ effect to our eyes. Almost all images in this gallery lack from one essential prerequisite: composition. Take the HDR out, and you look at mediocre craftsmanship in many cases. They simply are way too overcharged to still represent the genre of photography. OK, OK, of course one could state now: “Shut up, why should the way, light interacts with silver iodide/chips be the normative amen into the story?” Agreed. Our senses, the most of them operating on a logarithmic basis, in fact handle sensations right in this way: It needs 100W to appear double as loud as 10W and it needs 1000W to double this sensation again.
The same applies to light. Unfortunately, this does not apply to physical media.
This is, why neither film nor chips can see, what our eyes see. Of course, HDR can faciliate photographs that come closer to our perception. Yet, there is none in this collection. In my eyes, they exaggerate the ****s out of a technique, while forgetting about the underlying artistic rules. Look at image #2: Logarithmic based senses or not, it is absolutely impossible to see reality in this way. Now, obviously leaving both the fields of physical limitation (silver iodide/chip) and physiological perception (logarithmic handleable scale of sensation) one should be careful with the term photography. Pixelpainting? Photoncompressing? Hypercomposing? Digital eclecticism?
And, to move past given limitations is no proof that one has entered the fields of art yet.
In short: as soon as an image starts looking like HDR … take them levers down, at least a bit. Unless you want to be an HDR-artist – and exactly look like one. In this case, simply proceed at your discretion, yet, be prepared to be confronted with the unflattering tally ‘HDR-syndrome’.
A syndrome, possibly strong enough to overshadow the individual aspects of your work.
If it does not … you’re an artist!