HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography opens up an amazing range of options. Basically it combines light from multiple photos, but with Raw native files it can do much more. Photomatix is without doubt the most powerful HDR product, Photoshop can do a very basic ok job. If you Rollover your mouse on the Seattle photo I took below, you will see the Before shot before combining a couple of others taken with a couple of other exposure settings. Nothing special, but after combining, the After shot won an Award of Excellence award this month in the National Photo Awards.  I am testing another product that can simulate HDR very nicely with only one JPG photo, and will post an update and some examples on that in a future entry. Tripods used to be mandatory for HDR but now the software is getting good enough that it can automatically align multiple handheld shots. Fun stuff.  P.S. HDR is the way to also get panoramic photos (using software stitching) with Digital cameras (I miss those cheap Kodak panoramic cameras..), which I plan to do early next week in Big Sur (fog allowing).