Something a little different today. I'm not a huge HDR fan, but occasionally it's fun to shoot when you want to capitalize on / over-exaggerate the details in an image. HDR tends to bring out the "grunge" in a photo, giving it an overall dirty feel. The effect is intriguing, but not one I would want to use on most of my photos.
For this photo, I took three shots bracketed at 2 stops and then merged them in HDR pro. I output the image as a low-contrast, high-detail image. I then opened the original "middle exposure" image as a smart object in PS and overlaid my low-contrast, high-detail HDR on top. I then used the Hard Light blending mode to combine the two images, cutting down on the detail a little and upping the contrast a bit. I then converted to B&W and output the final image.
Below is a before and after to show you how drastic of a change the HDR effect has on an image like this. Just drag the mouse over the image to see the difference.
HDR is definitely a cool effect to mess around with. Try it out and see how you can use it to spruce up your photos.
