Tuesday 8 July 2014

The world in HDR

HDR ( high dynamic range ) is nothing new to photography, it's been around for many years now.
But the problem I'm having with it is some photographers can't do without it. Landscape, portrait, street photography, you name it, and HDR is all the rage.
I bring this up for two reasons. The first is that I recently was on a sports photographers website that had almost all of his images in HDR. Second, I teach photography on the weekends and quite a few of my students like to add HDR to an image and then tell people that's what the scene looked like in real life.
Hold on, HDR is a filter of sorts and can be added to an image for effect. Like below.


                

I have nothing against HDR. I use it as well. But I do try to tell people that I added it to the image.
How about another example. This image has less of the filter strength of the first image and I think works better but I'm still going to tell the viewer that it was used.



Like I said I like the HDR look, it's fun. But lets not pretend it's real life and fill our portfolios with ninety-five percent HDR. 
Years from now I don't want people saying "why did the world look so weird back then". A simple "processed with HDR" should bring us back to reality. 
My two cents.