High-dynamic-range (HDR) imaging is one of the remaining frontiers for significant advancement in consumer and professional color imaging systems. Systems for the capture, processing, and display of HDR images are gradually moving from the research labs and specialized applications to more mainstream usage and impact on consumer photography. The HDR Photographic Survey is a research project and public-domain database of images and scene data aimed at improving these systems by providing images and data that can be freely used by researchers around the world. This allows for more efficient testing and improvement of HDR algorithms and displays through enhanced inter-comparisons of results from various researchers and the availability of images with colorimetric and color appearance reference data from the original scenes. This paper describes the process of collecting the images and scene data, the system characterization, and the creation and use of the database.