This photograph is not your normal run of the mill picture of the inside of a Church. Following in Shutter Scripts footsteps I decided to broaden my horizons and challenge myself again. This image is a series of 6 HDR images that have been stitched together to form a 2×3 Panoramic photo of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart here in Winona MN. The Cathedral recently remodeled the entire inside of the church and I have to say the modern amenities and accessibility is a welcome change.. Not to mention is it simply gorgeous. For those of you that dont know HDR is a special photographic technique to capture as much detail as possible in an image. In this case the end result is an amazingly sharp 28 megapixel image. The file on my hard drive while I was editing it was over 4 Gigabytes in size but now saved it is a little over 337 megabytes in size. I posted the image a little bit larger so that you can see just how much detail there is in the highlights and in the image itself.

HDR imaging is accomplished by taking three pictures at different exposures and blending them together in a program like photoshop. This gives you the maximum dynamic range possible. This technique is not always applicable because of the need of a tripod and a still subject. Newer video cameras employ a similar technology where the lens actually splits the light and sends it to three sensors one for red, blue, and green. These 3ccd cameras have a much better image quality than most with just one.