HDR Photos at Museum of History

 There is a relatively new technique available in the world of photography called High Dynamic Range, or HDR.  There have been entire books written about HDR photography but, simply put, it allows a much broader range of light to be captured in a photograph than was ever possible in the past.

A new exhibit opened at the St. Petersburg Museum of History last Friday night, blending HDR techniques with history in a way that should be very appealing to anyone who appreciates St. Petersburg’s past.  The exhibit is called “Images of the Past Meet the Photography of the Future”.  A museum curator selected 32 historic photos from their archives, pictures of notable St. Petersburg places from many years ago.  Then, a group of 14 photographers from the North Pinellas Photography Forum set out to recreate the historic photos in today’s world, using modern equipment and HDR techniques.  The exhibit involves the pairing of the historic image next to the new HDR image for each photograph. 

I attended the opening reception on Friday night and I was extremely impressed.  Many of the new photographs were stunning, and it was just very fun to see the old images recreated in this manner.   If you’d like to see the photographs, the exhibit will continue at the Museum for awhile – it’s definitely worth a trip downtown to see these photos!  For information about the Museum, including location, hours, etc, go to their web site. 

And if you would like to see a few examples of HDR photography that are my own work, check out these examples in earlier blog posts of mine: example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4.