HDR stands for ‘high dynamic range’, a style of image processing that’s become both popular and notorious. It’s a technique that’s used to capture scenes with a very high brightness range and employs various tools to bring the brightest and darkest parts close enough together that they can both be seen in a single viewable image.

There are two parts to this. The first is capturing a series of exposures (or even a single exposure, maybe with a RAW file) that captures the full range of tones on the scene.

The second part is using ‘tonemapping’ or HDR software to manipulate the very brightest and darkest areas so that the details in both become clearly visible.

Some photographers try to make HDR images look as natural and ‘unmanipulated’ as possible. Others revel in the hyper-real colours, contrast and detail afforded by some of the more outlandish HDR tools out there.