High dynamic range (HDR) images aren’t just for extreme lighting conditions and special effects. They can be used to provide more depth and texture to an image than is possible with a single shot. These statues of daemons lining the bridge approach to the South Gate of Angkor Thom in Cambodia show a good example. By the time they are lit (with side light from the southeast in the morning in this case) the light is a little hard and wouldn’t have shown detail in the rocks.

By using three images (bracketed two stops apart, but one stop would also have worked) on my Nikon D600, then converting the images using the Deep Preset in Photomatix 4.2 [I added some brightness to the default], I was able to show a lot more detail. One reason I chose this particular set of statues is that they show the three different compositions on the bridge – one an original sandstone version, one a restored concrete version, and one a restored sandstone version.

If you’d like to join us for our next photo tour of Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma) we’ll be returning in December.