Van Buren, just across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith, is locked into a crook created by I-40 and I-540. The second largest city in the Fort Smith metro area, Van Buren was officially incorporated in 1842. Historic Main Street never looked this way before, created with High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI). Six blocks of restored Victorian Shops include notable restoration of the Crawford City Bank, the courthouse, and the Anheuser-Busch Brewery.
     HDRI, now shortened to HDR, allows a greater range of luminance between darks and lights of digital images. A broader tonal range is displayed when compared to traditional digital images. Looking more like work from an artist’s brush, HDR offers new and exciting avenues in photographic creations.
     The basic idea of using multiple exposures has been around since 1850 when Gustave Le Gray pieced together sky and surf negatives. Life Magazine’s cover displayed the artwork of Charles Wyckoff in the mid 1940s. Multiple film layers of an atomic blast were combined into a single image, impressing the world with the awesome explosion.
     Today’s personal computers, with an incredible amount of processing power, have opened the doors for HDR software developers. Sounds like Photoshop CS2 may be the holy grail of HDR.