Comments on: HDRI Photography: Exciting New Frontier, or Gimmick to Avoid?

By: Brett Cole

Brett Cole — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:47:15 +0000

McCurry, Lanting, none of the greats use HDR for good reason. It’s not necessary. Never has been for a hundred years up until now, and still isn’t. Just my opinion.

By: MIke

MIke — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:29:09 +0000

I suppose HDR can be overdone but only if a photographer starts to rely to heavily on it.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:48:55 +0000

I've been guilty of producing some shocking HDR, some of my better examples: http://www.aaron-photography.com/hdr-photography/ I think HDR is a hard thing to do well, I find myself constantly 'overdoing' it! Some mint examples from Mark Blundell.

By: Andrew McKenna

Andrew McKenna — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:53:10 +0000

My problem with HDR is that so often I feel the message of the photograph is lost in the medium. There’s just too much going on in those overprocessed HDR images There is no pathway to lead the viewer’s eye into the image and there is no difference in tone from foreground to background. In the end I find that all you end up with is flat looking, busy and fussy images. With some care and attention and used subtly, yes it can be produce stunning images but the rest, to my eyes, just look broken.

By: Gregory Tran

Gregory Tran — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 17:32:07 +0000

I don’t get the people who say they want HDR to go away… it doesn’t matter what techniques are out there ppl will use it “badly” (once again “bad” is pretty subjective isn’t it?)… if people like something then more power to them.. . it also doesn’t need to be even close to garish… here’s an image of mine i took.. does anything think it looks too HDR’ish? i do know that w/out HDR it would have looked like crap… http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorytran/5009726359/

By: izmostock

izmostock — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:02:29 +0000

@Daniel Korzeniewski. Very nice beach and ocean in Nassau, Bahamas Then….. I’m in the camp that HDRi is a tool on the photographer palette. HDRi is a tool to make images which represent our brain/eye systems perception. The crazy HDR look will fade away, but full dynamic range will stick. Back in the silver halide days of film it was common to use pan masking film sandwiched with a transparency to print on the much adored Cibachrome paper. Compressing dynamic range it was. In 2003 the kind people at EyeTools provided me some time with their eye tracking system. The system tracks eye movement and time. The objective of the HDRi eye tracking test was to see if people noticed the areas of detail. I showed a random group of 20 people HDRi and non-HDRi images. The results were conclusive that this small sample of people did spend more time looking at H/S details of the HDRi images. Mostly in the shadows. Back then the only HDR app I knew of was Paul Debevec’s HDRshop and the manual masking method in PS, so results were varied. The newer tools like oloneo.com are fantastic and a huge step closer to creating reality based HDRi images, with individual light source control. In my work with the automotive media catalog, bracketing and HDRi are just a normal loop in the workflow. Steven Poe izmostock.com

By: Sean Galbraith

Sean Galbraith — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:53:47 +0000

I’ll say upfront that I don’t enjoy the look of virtually all HDR images. They have a painterly, hyper-real quality that doesn’t appeal to me. It definitely has “shock value” and gets my attention like a kick to the nuts… but my interest in them passes very quickly. I find that looking at a photo by an old master, while not as immediately grabbing for my eyes, stays with me longer and I enjoy looking at it longer. In my own photography, I admit that I had an HDR phase a couple years ago. Gotta try new things. My interest in it didn’t last long, and in fact I abandoned digital photography altogether not long afterwards. I greatly prefer chemical/film photography. My preference is to remove as much “technology” as possible from the process. Hell, my current camera gear was made 20 years before I was born. All that being said… for those who want to employ the technique… more power to you. Do what works for you, regardless of what others think (unless you do shitty work.. then definitely listen to what others are telling you). I generally consider the way HDR is practiced by MOST practitioners (including several above) to be in the expressionist realm of photography. And if painting and music can have expressionist styles, I don’t see why photography can’t either. And just as Pollack isn’t to every Vermeer fan’s taste, so is it fine is HDR isn’t to every Bresson fan’s taste. Photography is a big enough tent for many styles.

By: Daniel Korzeniewski

Daniel Korzeniewski — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:02:19 +0000

Yeahhh I was on drugs also when I shoot this HDR Image.... http://archive.danielkorzeniewskiphoto.com/image/I0000aN1efgFUIBM Please give me a break... HDR can be anything you want, but don't tell me it can't be done with realistic look.

By: Mike Olbinski

Mike Olbinski — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:48:26 +0000

RE: Steve Ummm…if I look at a storm brewing in front of me…I see depth, shadows, colors, textures…if I snap a standard photo of it…there is NO WAY you can see all that stuff in the photograph. Yes, I could use filters and go nuts trying to get it to look right…and that’s one way to do it. HDR…when done cleanly and naturally…can bring out the depth, shadows, etc., that I was seeing when standing there. But I guess I’m just on drugs right? Flavor of the month huh? It’s still amazing to me how much hatred artists can have for each other and their style of work.

By: Mike Olbinski

Mike Olbinski — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:36:05 +0000

Here is my take on this stuff…which is bothering me to write, but I see a lot of silliness here and need to respond. I’d rather not, because this argument makes me sick and wish I didn’t have to deal with artists feeling the need to attack others, but that’s the way it goes. First off, art is art. If I want to create a crappy, halo-filled HDR photo, who are you guys to tell me to learn something else? As a matter of fact, as much as I don’t like it, there ARE people out there who love those overdone, grungy HDR photos. If someone likes making them, who cares? Why can’t artists just learn to let other people do what they want without attacking it? We’re all struggling to showcase a vision. We should be supporting each other as artists, not ripping someone’s art to shreds. I read a little bit of Jim Goldstein’s blog about how much he hates it. In the blog, he gives 3 different alternatives to getting similar results. A few of which are basically Photoshop related. So….why is doing masking or exposure blending in PS THE RIGHT WAY, and HDR tone mapping wrong? It’s all software right? Some artists like to rip on HDR because people will use it to make a poorly composed photo “look better”. True, that happens I guess. But I’ve also taken photos that look just okay in color, but I convert them to B&W and they LOOK BETTER. But my eye saw color…how dare I change it to B&W? In fact, I’m so sick of everyone leaning on B&W to make a photo look more “artsy”… (that last line was fake, but you get my point…or don’t, who cares) I love the way HDR brings out the nastiness in stormy weather…in fact, I’m one of the few stormchasers I know using HDR as a technique to convey this. I have a ton of fans who follow my work and have purchased that work to hang in their houses, display on their business websites or use in a play at a local theater. But I also do color and B&Ws of my weather photos. It’s not my only trick in the bag. The bottom line is this: There is a lot of bad HDR out there. There are also awesome HDR photographers out there…like Mark in this post, or Brian Matiash, or Trey Ratliff…etc, etc. But none of it matters. It’s art. They want to convey an image in a certain way. Deal with it. Stop arguing over it. Stop trying to decide if it’s a fad or not. It’s here…people use it, people like it, and if you don’t, well…keep it to yourself :) A friend of mine said recently…”If you want to get some blog traffic, blog about the love/hate going on with HDR.” I wish that would stop. I wish we’d just move on from that topic as a group of artists and bloggers and instead (OMG!) start supporting each other.