What 'HDR' Is And Why We Use It

There's a lot behind the scenes when it comes to real estate photography. Cameras, settings, lenses, flashes, and reflectors are all things that typically go into real estate photography. At ATA Imaging we've made the whole process simple!

The first thing to note is that flash photography can be outstanding or horrific. To achieve the outstanding photos, it requires a lot of shooting time and a lot of editing time as well.. Often causing turnaround times to be slower.

So what's the alternative? This is where we come in. We don't use any flashes, saving loads of time during the shoot, and we do all the magic in the camera settings. We use a setting called AEB, or Auto Exposure Bracketing, which allows us to take 3 or more photos at the same time all at different exposures. What does this mean? This means we have a dark photo (so you can see through the windows), and neutral photo (to capture the natural light in the room), and a bright photo (to lighten up any dark areas or shadows in the room).

Where the real magic happens is behind the scenes in editing! Once we have the photos, we combine all 3 photos into one single photo which is then called an HDR photo, or High Dynamic Range. We use the dark photo of the 3 for the windows, the neutral photo for the majority of the room, and the bright photo for the shadows and dark spaces!

What's the best part? We include HDR photos as standard so you don't pay any extra!

Let's have a look at an HDR photo compared to a normal photo: