Passing Place

Passing Place, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

Let’s talk about HDR.

There’s a debate going on about HDRs and I think there is an element of snobbery around the whole thing. Firstly, the initially idea around a High Dynamic Range picture was that it would (doh) boost the dynamic range, bringing up shadows, correcting the exposure in a sky or adding tones and depth in under-exposed areas. Essentially, making a ‘normal’ picture better. With tools like Photomatix it’s possible to boost these levels beyond reality, creating some bizarre, unusual and surreal images that only bear a basic compositional similarity to the original picture.

Your HDR snobs (like Conrad Obregon in this book review on TWIP) think that ‘overcooking’ a HDR is somehow distasteful. Personally I liked to blur the line a bit, choosing to boost the contrast & saturation just slightly over what my eye sees as ‘normal’.

This lends a kind of oil-painting feel to my pictures that I really like, it gives my landscapes a sense of individuality. So in Conrad's (and plenty of others) eyes does this make me a bad photographer?

Interestingly, the more I overcook an image and the weirder it looks, the more plaudits and awards I receive on Flickr, “Cats Sunset” (see below) is my most successful picture on flickr to date, hundreds of views, several awards and loads of positive feedback. It’s also the most over-processed picture I’ve ever done. It’s actually a very dull landscape, rocky beach, tree and a little bit of sea water coupled with a moderately spectacular sky. It was fun to do as I was learning Photomatix, but I think that my ‘Storm Clouds’ shot is much more dramatic and significantly less processed than ‘cats sunset’. To date, ‘Storm Clouds’ has attracted less than half the comments and views of ‘cats sunset’.

So does that mean a ‘good’ HDR can be a ‘bad’ photo?

I don’t know, I’ve found my personal approach to doing it, I’m enjoying it, learning loads along the way and for the first time, attracting some great (positive and negative) comments for my work. I still take plenty of non HDR images; most of my portraits, macro and so forth are all just touched up in Photoshop.

HDR is simply a different take on things, like using a filter, or colouring your pictures in Photoshop or anything. It’s also new, and as with all new things it’s viewed with ignorance and used ignorantly. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so find your personal way of doing your HDRs and enjoy it! Okay rant over,

***Edit - I originally stated that Scott Bourne wrote the article on TWIP mentioned in the above post - it's important to note that he did not. Apologies to Scott for misquoting him - Twitter is broken so I can't apologise personally.***