Comments on: Mastering High Dynamic Range Photography [BOOK REVIEW]

By: Zach

Zach — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:41:45 +0000

Using HDR isn’t cheating, you’re right. Its just boring as hell.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:25:18 +0000

I Love HDR photography but am held back by costs I do what I think is the best that my basic editor can achieve in Serif and my point and shoot while saving for a more able DSLR and Photoshop would love to know if there are any plug ins for Serif that will work

By: Mark Umpirowicz

Mark Umpirowicz — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:44:17 +0000

There will always be pros and cons to any new techinque. The purists argue against, the tech savy argue for. all that aside look at it this way. If you had at your disposal any number of ND filters that could change shape to fit where you required them and put them infront of your camera you would have HDR mechanically or old school. doing it using software is not cheating any more than dodging was using paper and an enlarger. It is just using tools that are your disposal.

By: JohnB

JohnB — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:01:43 +0000

HDR is like a butter knife, or a baseball bat. It’s a tool that can be used as it was intended, or “misused” to the absurd. But even in a case where it’s been used to the extreme, the image makes a statement, albeit a different one than the base image would make.

By: scruffyone

scruffyone — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:28:45 +0000

I bought this book, and it is excellent. Some of the ideas and ’sciency bits’ can be quite complex, but never overly so. The only problem with it, as with any photography tutorial in print is that because of the quality of the printed image, it can be quite hard to spot the difference between some ‘before and after’ comparisons. That said It has really inspired me to try this technique for myself. ( I cant stand the overdone HDR shots either)

By: Eric Magnuson

Eric Magnuson — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:01:30 +0000

I completely agree with what’s been said about the super surrealistic photos giving it a bad name. When people overdo them, they look a little too surrealistic. However, this is not was HDR was originally intended for. The whole [original] point of HDR is to is to have a high range of highlights and shadows; it’s meant to make photos look more realistic than normal photos, not less realistic.

What I’m trying to say is that HDR is an incredibly powerful photographic tool to create realistic photos. That’s the whole point. It is only the overdone ones that are questionable (in my opinion).

By: Marcus

Marcus — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:14:41 +0000

I like HDR if it’s done in moderation. The cartoonish over-done images are what gives HDR a bad name. My favorite HDR technique is actually using a single RAW image. I output nine different .jpg’s from Adobe Camera Raw, one at each full stop under/over exposed and one as shot. I name them according to the exposure (+1,+2… -1, -2, etc…). I then pull up Photomatix and merge them. When determining the processing in photomatix, I just pay attention to the histogram and try to get it in the middle as much as possible. Finally, I’ll pull the processed image back into Photoshop and do some final edits.

Before HDR processing:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/3185819071/sizes/l/in/set-72157612416590784/

After HDR processing:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/3188911248/sizes/l/in/set-72157612416590784/
Here is my favorite shot using that technique:

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:46:28 +0000

I think HDR, as most people practice it on flickr, is surrealism. The images just look so weird and obviously fake. I think a lot of people really push the HDR past some realism limit. Of course, they’re beautiful as art, but not as documentary photography.

By: Eric Magnuson

Eric Magnuson — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:21:36 +0000

IMO, HDR is not lame. If you want to have a beautiful HDR shot, you still do need to focus on composition, and it does take talent. You must know what makes a good HDR. It requires composing the shots so that the bright highlights and the dark shadows will look balanced.

As far as it taking talent, it definitely does. 90% of the time, a shot SOTC is not the final product in any realm of photography. Ever heard of post-production? Like a darkroom? It’s been around for ages. Just like a darkroom, a digital photographer must know how to process a photo to make a beautiful final product. Post-production is half of the game in photography.

Go take a stroll around Flickr, and you’ll find tons of not-so-great HDRs. Then go look around some more, and you’ll find some amazing shots from talented photographers.

By: Zach

Zach — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:00:53 +0000

HDR is lame. It’s similar to macro photography in the sense that all that is required to make ANY subject look totally awesome is the knowledge to shoot a proper macro, or in this case HDR photo of it. No actual composition or photographic talent required.

Some things look better in HDR than other but everything has a baseline level of awesome that ultimately is just trite and boring. Just like macro is in 99% of cases.