HDR

In my previous post I blogged about a some photos I had taken of the Draper, Utah LDS Temple. Both posted images were HDR, both triple exposed and tonemapped in photomatix. My friend Jon asked me if I would post the original images so he could see the difference, this morning I finally got around to getting the pictures up on flickr. You will probably want to view in large, the photo collage I did is a bit small.



So lets talk about HDR as a form of photography. I hear often about people's distaste for HDR and honestly I tend to agree with them. As you browse around flickr you see so many images of ordinary things that people think HDR will make extraordinary, I tend to feel this is the type of imagery that turns people off to HDR. But look at the three images and then look at the original:



I was able show building with the sun setting behind is and even bring out the detail in the brick. No matter how hard I tried with any of the images I had would I have been able to accomplish this, they were basically lost images for me. I ended up toning (over the top look) the shot a little more than normal, but I loved the dramatic sunset and thought it was the perfect scene against what I consider to be an amazing and spiritual place. As I progress as a photographer I find myself relying on HDR a little less than I used to but I still consider it a valuable tool and a very interesting form of photography (I consider it no different than B&W, infrared, etc). Obviously this is just the ramblings of a complete photography amateur, but if you have even the slightest interest in HDR just give it a shot.

***PS: It wont make ordinary scenes look anything but... overprocessed ordinary***