Recently I’ve been playing around with HDR (or tonemapped, if you prefer) photos. They seem to be somewhat of a love/hate affair, with many people voicing strong opinions against them. The term “HDR” refers to high dynamic range; more specifically in digital photography, it usually refers to the process of bracketing and combining multiple exposures of the same image. By combining underexposed and overexposed images, you end up with a final product that shows all the detail in both shadow and highlight areas.
The process of creating HDR photos isn’t too hard, but mastering it can be very difficult. There is a great tutorial written by Trey Ratcliff, who runs a travel photography website full of HDR shots – Stuck In Customs. He has some quite nice images, and was the first person to have an HDR photo in the Smithsonian.
On our recent holiday to New Zealand, I tried to take as many HDR shots as I could. Many of them were hand-held, which makes it harder to align them properly, but Photomatix does a fairly good job. The problem with HDR photos is that every new photographer seems to overdo them, and the majority of HDR photos on the web seem to look very unrealistic, with crazy colours and contrast. Some people love the effect, and others hate it. I try to aim somewhere in between; creating photos that pop out, but don’t look too unrealistic.
All the photos on this page were taken by me in New Zealand. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
#1 by Camille on March 4, 2010 - 11:21 am
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Whilst I love the things HDR can give and understand the merits of it, I can also understand why people hate it. I don’t hate it, I just don’t enjoy it being overused – I don’t believe someone’s photographic portfolio should be wholly made up of the stuff, otherwise it loses its novelty (as with everything else overused).
It is my own personal belief that if there is too much of one thing in someone’s folio they’re playing it safe and keeping to what they know is a crowd pleaser, or they don’t know how to do anything else. Taking an HDR shot of something instantly makes it look more interesting – an easier way to keep people ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at photos. But as I said – personal opinion only.
As for your photos, I don’t think I need to comment on them, you already know I like them lol.
#2 by Camille on March 4, 2010 - 11:33 am
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I think specialising in one thing can make you a valuable commodity, and certainly a good way of branding yourself. Take Trey Ratcliff for example – I don’t love every shot he takes, but when you think HDR you immediately think of him. And it has resulted in great success for him – being featured in galleries, conducting seminars etc.
If you look at all the very successful photographers, they each have their own individual style which has developed over time; none of them seem to generalise too much.
#3 by Camille on March 4, 2010 - 12:01 pm
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Yes, exactly – specialising in one thing can make you a valuable commodity, but once someone else has done that one thing, that’s it for everyone else. HDR is now Trey Ratcliff’s thing. If any other John Citizen tried to do the same thing it’d be like ‘pfft’.
My point being, some photographers who are still trying to find their unique style do tend to dapple in too much of everything at some point, HDR being an example. That’s alright though – all about learning.
Also, the above comment says it was by me for some reason…
#4 by Dan on March 6, 2010 - 12:16 am
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Specialisation is a natural part of maximising the profitability of any business. The more of an expert you are at something, the easier (and cheaper in terms of time and money) it is to produce high quality (and thus more expensive) work. Generalists who try to do everything tend towards failure in business.
For a photographer who doesn’t know where the next dollar is coming from, I think it’s important to have a wide skillset, but if you have the luxury of not depending on your photography for an income, you would be better served getting extremely good at taking a smaller subset of pictures. Sports pictures, HDR landscapes, portraits, etc.
That’s my perspective as an economist, anyway
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#5 by Luke on March 8, 2010 - 2:47 am
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Whoops – you must’ve been using my computer recently :p
#6 by Camille on March 9, 2010 - 10:57 pm
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Type your comment here
Whoops! You’re a loser.
#7 by Luke on March 10, 2010 - 5:55 am
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I just got some of these done as 7×5 matte prints. They look really great
So much more vibrant than regular photos.
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