Comments on: I object, your honor

By: sixfive

sixfive — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:45:18 +0000

I completely agree kurt, mainly about flickr in general. It’s a mutual admiration society, and I think you’ve put my vague feelings into more pinpoint focus- there are worthwhile photographers on there, and people that will leave quality comments, but it’s a large community.

By: wayne

wayne — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:33:32 +0000

Dirk – I would agree with you to a degree, but the key difference is that unlike intentionally blurring an image or removing the color, HDR is adding more information – your main problem is the processing of that information. I think a better comparison would be the very long exposure night photography (also to be found in several groups on flickr).

This technique might seem like a gimmick to serious photographers, the same way an actual musician might roll their eyes at pop music that relies on hooks to beef up the lean meat of love songs – but the typical set of eyes viewing photographs responds to photos that help them see things in new ways, regardless of quality.

By: akikana

akikana — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:31:39 +0000

The first ’tilt-shift’ was interesting…perhaps they’ll publish a whole book of them? As someone said recently, I’ll stick to B&W film for my HDR fix – plenty of lattitude with that Ilford XP2.

By: Dirk

Dirk — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:50:14 +0000

If it helps you “look at a familiar scene, object or composition in a new way”, it is clear that the intention is to use it as an effect to beef up an image which had little meat on the bone at the first place (sorry for carnivore references, Kurt). Like making a photo more interesting by turning into black and white.

Anyway, not much more to add to the topic of HDR, we have had all this before. It got my 30 minutes of attention so let’s move on while keeping an eye on the original “what’s new with digital” watching brief. Fake T&S, HDR… perhaps we will see a pattern emerge after all.

By: wayne

wayne — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 23:59:33 +0000

As one of the paint by numbers crowd that sometimes makes HDRs, I’ll throw in two cents on this issue. Of course 95-98% of HDR you see on Flickr is boring, mediocre, mindless (I know mine are!) – But there is the 2% of it, that while the photos might not stand up to the test of time in a decade, help you look at a familiar scene object or composition in a new way.

Of course if you just click click the default settings of the plug in you get a certain HDR look, but it is possible to use in a subtle fashion to improve exposure in difficult lighting situations, get a little extra depth of color from a point and shoot, etc. In this way it can be like white balance and the exposure settings when you import a raw file. So for the majority it makes garish candy, but it can and will be used tastefully and become another choice.

With that said, I agree about the tilt shift photos – I haven’t seen examples of that technique used in that subtle fashion (but perhaps it is possible). One expects these techniques will become popular in ads in the next few years, so I was shocked when I saw tilt-shift esque photos used in National Geographic a few months back: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0608/feature1/gallery1.html
(I know some are just DOF, but the second one in particular)