I've been hearing about HDR (high dynamic range) photos for a while. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it's the process of combining multiple exposures of the same scene into a single photo to create an image with a wider range of properly exposed tone. This is particularly helpful when you have a scene with really bright whites and really dark shadows.

I'm increasingly intrigued with how technology can alter the way we approach the creation of art, and how it makes the formerly impossible, possible. For example, the discovery of "perspective" in art created a huge transformation in painting. As I commented in a previous blog entry, I feel the high-sensitivity, low noise sensors in the most recent crop of sensors has also made a new range of photography feasible.

So here's my first attempt at HDR photography. I took 9 frames of the same image on my Nikon D3 bracketing the exposure from only exposing the highlights (so that most of the frame was black) to only exposing the shadows (so that most of the frame was blown out). I tried processing them with the "Merge to HDR" command in Photoshop CS3, but unfortunately, my G5 Mac wasn't liking the huge file sizes and intensive computation. So I had to try it with 3 downsized photos.

Here's the image exposed for the highlights.

And the image exposed for the shadows.

A few things of note:
- I processed the "original" version with Nikon Capture NX, which uses the native conversion algorithms. The result? Well, the conversion is pretty darn good. Colors and contrast in particular seem really great to my eye.
- The HDR version is processed with Adobe's Camera RAW plug-in, which is a reverse-engineered conversion process. Nikon's RAW format is proprietary, so Adobe has to do a best guess to convert it. I find that saturation usually suffers the most.
- That said, you'll notice that I was able to control the highlight areas of the HDR version significantly, so that the overall effect is quite nice. I retain good shadow detail, and don't blow out the highlights that occur when I'm only using a single exposure.

Here's a single exposure image for comparison. I've circled the blown-out areas in red.

I'm sure that an experienced HDR person could do a much better job, and I've certainly seen scenes that work more effectively than this (e.g. dramatic clouds, sunsets, etc). But it's an interesting technique to consider, particularly as a way to give travel imagery a real pop. But like a lot of techniques, I get the feeling that you can get consumed with overprocessing the scene such that the content and composition become subjugated, and suddenly the art is gone.

"Mommy-blogger" Tracey Gaughran-Perez received an early holiday gift from FOX during an NFL game when they stole a photo she had taken of her little pug, Truman, and photoshopped a santa hat on him.

Transformative? Derivative? Potentially harmful to her economic potential?

Law Geek raised legitimate points regarding "fair use" in his Lane Hartwell entry, but he also points out that fair use aside, there is an issue of ethics. I don't have high hopes for FOX to trailblaze an ethical path, but seriously, when they are getting massive advertising dollars for running their NFL broadcasts, the photo is most certainly being used for commercial purposes, therefore Tracey should be compensated. Chances that she will be? 0% Chances that the image is registered with the US Copyright Office? -4%. (I hope I'm wrong).

The issue of ethics does become increasingly important as we look at the issue of "infringement" because litigation alone won't create the disincentive for people to stop misappropriating photos. And even if everyone registered their photos with the US Copyright Office, there would be too many infractions to realistically prosecute. So we need an attitude change.

When I was in college, I got an earful about plagiarism and photocopying copyrighted works from the school. The local copyshops wouldn't allow you to xerox more than a few pages because they got the message that it wasn't in anyone's economic interest (except the student) to illegally duplicate copyrighted materials. But for whatever reason, we haven't adopted the same attitude towards music and photos. Technological solutions can make it easier for consumers to legally procure copyrighted materials (think iTunes), but it's not a panacea. We have to accept as a society that creative works are entitled to protections, and that we shouldn't arbitrarily rip them off from others.

I've heard the argument that if we don't compensate artists, that we will end up with a sea of mediocre art because no one will be able to afford being an artist. I don't buy that argument because art will be created as an extension of self, and people with create amazing art whether they are compensated or not. However, a cultured society's existence isn't predicated on legality alone. Ethics and morality do play a part in shaping and preserving a community, and therefore we have to continue to push for an ethical approach to "sharing" art.

Update: David Pogue wrote about The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality. Interesting, but not surprising. But college students generally don't have a care in the world (relatively speaking). Minds change when they are in the "real world."

Stepping off the soap box....

A Photo Editor Outs Himself

The highly entertaining aphotoeditor has revealed his identity. If you haven't had an opportunity to read his blog, check out some of his "tell it like it is" attitude that won over so many fans over the past few months.

http://aphotoeditor.com/2007/12/26/rob-haggart-is-a-photo-editor/

Christmas Movie Marathon

I completed my 4th, not so annual, Christmas movie marathon -- The 4th in 11 years. The movie list?

1. Alien vs. Predator -- Requiem (terrible)
2. I am Legend. Incredible NY-city effects. Do it.
3. Walk Hard. Funny. Very funny. I'm surprised it hasn't done better at the box office, but I'm sure it'll kick it on DVD, and a cult favorite.
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. This little french gem is about former French Elle editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffered a stroke and ended up with "Locked-In Syndrome" which rendered him a quadriplegic. Nevertheless, he ended up writing a book by "blinking" each letter of every word.
5. Juno. Really phenomenal acting, and funny. Not "Walk Hard" funny, but still very enjoyable.

One year ago at our PhotoShelter holiday party, there were only eight of us sitting around a table at Kelley & Ping in Soho. This year, we're blessed to finish off the year with twenty-three people that support the 19,000 PhotoShelter Personal Archive users and 8,500 PhotoShelter Collection users.

Tomorrow I'm spending Christmas watching a movie marathon in New York, in lieu of visiting the folks back home in Hawaii (lest you think I'm crazy, I didn't go back because my parents' house is being rebuilt right now). So how apropos that the New York Times recently wrote about the incredible cost of storing digital footage as revealed by a white paper created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences entitled "The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials."

Consider the following findings:
- A conventional film master costs $1,059 per year to store
- A digital master costs $12,514 a year

Variety reports:

"Among many facts likely to give decisionmakers pause, the paper notes that the current 2K digital cinema standard is inferior to the quality of 35mm film and that digital storage media have a much shorter lifespan than film. The yearly cost of archiving a higher-quality 4K master is $104.28 per running minute as compared to $8.83 per running minute for film."

And the astute observation that holds true for still photographers as well:

"Furthermore, since digital cameras don't require reloading the way film cameras do, directors are shooting much more footage and there is more material than ever to be cataloged and stored."

Film has a shelf-life of 100 years if properly stored. Unfortunately, many of the old celluloids have deteriorated because archival techniques weren't very refined. So analog isn't necessarily so much better than digital.

What's the solution? There is none...yet. Changing media, formats, and standards make preservation an almost impossible task. This is the price for incredible technological change. Every new camera I've purchased has slightly different instructions embedded in the RAW format. The resolution of the files has increased at a rate that I would argue is faster than the corresponding drop in disk prices (or at least it feels that way).

So what have we really gained since the world went digital at the turn of the century? First, fidelity is better. We can record directly to digital, and the sensors and algorithms are incredible. The light sensitivity that I discussed in this entry has made it possible to capture images that couldn't have been captured on film or even earlier generations of digital. And secondly, access to the data is near instantaneous. We don't have to sift through shoeboxes because we can affix meta data directly to the files, and search, retrieve and distribute in a matter of seconds.

This is the reality that the information has brought about. It's "better" in the ways that I've outlined, but only time will tell if it's really made society better. Will the flow of information prevent wars? Will it improve living conditions? Will it generate better photography and a great appreciation of photography?

Check back with me in a year. In the meantime, enjoy a safe and happy holidays!

PS. Wanna read more on this sobering topic?
http://www.contentinople.com/author.asp?section_id=431&doc_id=140110

Flickr'd. verb.
To have an image that you posted on Flickr misappropriated by a third party without your permission.

First there was Body Magic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/larajade/513641346/

Then Alison lost her Virginity
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/24/creative_commons_deception/

Then an earthquake with Lane Hartwell
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/12/photographers

I love flickr. I have a flickr Pro account. My dad posts pictures of our house on flickr. The Strobist uses flickr. One could argue that flickr + sub-$1000 DSLRs made PhotoShelter economically viable. But the bottom line is that photos are intellectual property, and the IP concept of fair use doesn’t apply to theft.

People that use flickr as a source for free imagery have got to get this through their head. It doesn’t matter if you think copyright laws in the US are broken, they exist, and to misappropriate an image because you misunderstand the law isn’t right.

In the case of the Richter Scales use of Lane Hartwell’s image, the fracas could have been avoided in the first place if they had simply selected an image that didn’t have “all rights reserved.” There are 2 billion images on flickr, and you’re telling me that a bunch of erudite singers couldn’t take another few seconds to find an image that had the appropriate Creative Commons license? (Full disclosure: I sang in an a cappella group in college, baa!)

Intellectual Property laws are slippery (and often archaic) to understand, but flickr is probably the largest functioning repository of Creative Commons objects, and the definitions of the licenses are so straightforward that only blatant disregard and cavalier attitude towards creative rights could explain this situation.

Yes, the Richter Scales are a fun a cappella group that created the video as a parody, but the success of the video acts as marketing for the group. More people show up for concerts, more CDs are sold, more beer money for those gentlemen songsters. So in the end, they are benefiting by the inclusion of Ms. Hartwell’s image. Their claim of “fair use” is spurious because they are not parodying the photo, they are parodying the subject of the photo. If their interpretation was correct, then an ESPN blogger could take a photo of Roger Clemens with the statement that “he’s a joke!” and not pay a licensing fee. Clearly, this is not legal.

Back in the olden days, it was commonplace for creatives to have patrons (Think JS Bach). But since that isn't economical reality for the most part anymore, we have to ensure that we respect the intellectual rights of creatives so that they can continue making new works, lest we be relegated to listening to Sheena Easton, watching re-runs of the A-Team, and looking at that Robert Doisneau photo that everyone had in their dorm room for the rest of our lives.

I'm pretty sure we don't want *that*.

Most recent articles regarding photography and its intersection with technology have focused on the destruction of photography as an art. Peter Plagens opined in Newsweek that “A digital photograph… can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality.” We’ve also seen recent examples of technology from Microsoft that can use multiple pictures of a place from different angles to create an idealized version of the scene. Technology applied this way is scary to me. Perhaps this is because I’m not adept in Photoshop the way that many of my contemporaries are.

But there are technological advances in photography that I think have as profound an impact without “altering” reality. For example, despite all my statements to the contrary, I did recently purchase a Nikon D3 for the sole purpose of having better performance in low light situations. I’ve been blown away by the results.

This particular camera has an ISO sensitivity up to 25,600. That’s not a misprint. When I was a kid, I thought ISO 800 was high speed, and I had heard these stories of people pushing film to 3200, but I could nary believe it. But digital sensors have become so good that they are now orders of magnitude more sensitive, which basically allows us to take photos we could not have create before. We aren’t manipulating pixels, we’re just making them more sensitive.

The top photo is of Gilad from Grupo Yanqui taken at the Smoke jazz club in Harlem at ISO 8000, f/2.8, 1/40th. This second photo is of my friend Darren in the Merc Bar shot at ISO 8000, f/4, 1/80th. The last photo of Tony Award-nominee, Manoel Felciano, is at a mere ISO 3200, f/2.8, 1/125th. It is the case that the light sensitivity of the sensor exceeds that of the focusing mechanism, that is, the camera has trouble focusing in spaces this dark, even though it can expose properly. No noise suppression was used on these images.

Does this mean a resurgence of night photography? I’m not sure. Maybe it just means sharper photos in lower light. Maybe it means more depth-of-field in lower light. I’ve gone through 4 generation of digital cameras in about a decade, and the difference in quality is staggering. So I’ll continue to let my Photoshop skills languish, and instead, try to concentrate on capturing the realism of photography the way I like it.