Langton Caudle - Stonton Wyville
I keep coming back to this subject and having played around with it for a while I thought it might be useful to try and marshall my thoughts and see if they make sense - to me at least! So High Dynamic Range (HDR) what is there to say? I think the first thing to say is that it can result in some very bizarre and, to my eye at least, unsatisfactory images. (See Google Search) I am not sure why this is. I suspect that many people have been intoxicated by the power of Photomatix. It is all too easy to produce some strange outcomes with Photomatix and many people seem to to do this.
But what should a HDR photograph look like? This is a ridiculous question but what I mean is why use HDR at all? Well the main reason HDR was developed was to capture a much higher dynamic range than a normal sensor could. There are a whole series of problems with this, not least the problem of producing a true HDR output, either as a print of or on screen.
So the technique is fraught with complications and problems. Over the past few years many software developers have produced software that automates the mixing of images to produce a HDR image. Here we start to enter a problem area. Each of these software packages produces their own outcomes, probably slightly different from the next, and so we have to ask the question exactly who produced the image? Now this an angel on the head of pin argument with no real conclusion apart from leaving a bad taste in your mouth. But it is important when considering HDR images as they are amalgams of two or more images captured at the scene.
In part as a result of concerns over control and, if I am truthful, never really feeling comfortable with the Photomatix software I now blend my own images together to produce a HDR. I also feel this helps me produce the result that I want rather than what the software insists on producing. One example that I feel I have been able to overcome is the problem of movement between images of such things as leaves, people etc. I can now address this problem with much greater certainty by controlling the whole process myself. This is also the case with the control of details within the image as well.
So what is the result of all this? Well, I feel I have moved away from the metallic look and feel of many HDR images. I am now able to produce images that have significant increase in details and tonal range and whilst retaining their original look and feel. The photographs from my current Leicestershire Round series demonstrates what I mean - the later would have been very difficult to produce with Photomatix as the sheep moved quite a bit between the three images.
I am coming to any conclusions or am I just confusing matters even more? Both and neither. I feel that HDR is an important technique that I currently use extensively but it can be a dead end if you let the software control what you are doing - however this is true of all photography - it is the photographer that makes the photograph - the equipment facilitates nothing more.
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