Digital Camera sensors are limited in balancing for highlights and shadows of a scene, and I also find this to be the case when using the in-camera hdr software that is available to date in digital cameras. HDR Software is an excellent tool for blending the tonal range of any scene without having to rely on flash or long exposure photography. The two images displayed in this article were both shot using the HDR technique, while I was leading a Japan photo tour and we overnighted in the 250-year-old traditional Japanese ryokan that inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s Spired Away.

For each dynamic traditional Japanese hallway scene, I shot five raw images two at 1/3 increments exposing for shadows, one shot for the middle tone and two shots in 1/3 increments for the highlights.
For software I used Photomatix HDR Pro 6 to process and blend the raw images. Photomatix Pro 6 is a stand-alone HDR photo editing program with all the bells and whistles, allowing you to work on a single image or a bracketed set of photos. Before the days of HDR, photographers had to heavily rely upon speedlights, strobes, reflectors, filters and long exposures for our architectural, commercial photography. It sure is a great time to be a photographer with such advanced tools and software at our disposal; I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.