good explination telafonic, and yes...3, 4, and 11 are HDR
basically digital cameras don't have the technology to capture a scene the way you see it with your eye because they don't have a high enough dynamic range. a lot of people realize this very quickly when they see something that looks really good, take a picture of it, and then later when they look at the picture, they realize it's not as incredible as it first seemed when they originally saw the scene. that's because you can only properly expose for ONE range, which is either going to be shadows, highlights, or midtones. everything else in the picture isn't going to show up exactly how you saw it. most people expose for the midtones because that'll capture the most out of the scene, however the shadows and highlights are usually lacking.
so then HDR was invented.
you take 3-5 exposures at different shutter speeds to expose each part of the scene correctly. you then open all the different exposures up in photoshop and after a series of steps, you manage to combine all of them into one image. the result is an image that looks just as brilliant as you originally saw it (nothing too dark, nothing too light, all the colors matching, etc etc)...
the problem is, like telafonic said, that it sometimes creates a very unnatural image that is actually MORE brilliant than what you originally saw. some people like it, some people hate it. This was my first time using HDR and ill admit i might have gotten a little carried away with my colors....stay tuned for my pictures from New York...I utilized HDR a lot for that trip as well and this time it's much more subtle.
thanks for the comments everyone!
