There is Always a Place for HDR!
Last Thursday I went and spoke to the Digital Dimensions & Beyond Photo Group in Kansas City.
I will admit, I was very intimidated at first. I had to speak to all levels from the beginner to the advanced and some have been taking photographs since before I was even a twinkle in my parent’s eyes.
I had to build a case for HDR to those who may have rejected it, rekindle flames in those who may have tried it and not liked it, and inspire those who had never seen it. It was a tough presentation, I called it “A Place 4 HDR“. It was VERY well received and I was truly honored!
This presentation is about how HDR can have a place in any photographer’s workflow or style. Not really a how to, more like a lecture style presentation. A bit different than what I am used to.
This group of individuals was very inspiring with a wealth of knowledge beyond imaginable. I was honored to present my passion to them and cannot wait to meet with them again! Before the presentation started I asked the President of the group, John Caulfield, how many would be expected. He said anywhere between 30 and 50… 80 showed up! Again, I am awe-struck and honored to have had such a great turnout from such a great group!
I certainly hope that by watching this you have either built a stronger case for it, rekindled a flame, or became inspired to do some more HDR!
If you have a camera club that would like me to come and speak, please contact me as I would be more than willing to try and work something out!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
I really enjoy your webinars, both on HDR & your topaz ones as well. I have never been that pleased with the resluts I have received from using Photomatix. I wondered if you have ever tried HDR Expose for processing your image sets. Expose converts the input images to a propriatry color space they call beyond rgb (but it really looks like the Lab mode) which does lots better at rendering accurate colors. I hear that it is the choice of real estate photographers that are working with huge variences of exposure values from indoors HDR where they are taking around 30 exposures at 1/3 stop to make the image as smooth as possible. Last Christmas I photographed a local gardens (indoors) that has decorations from all over the world – my HDR sets contained an excess of 22 EV’s & the color accuracy was amazing. I would also like to recommend Christian Bloch’s book The HDRI Manual ver. 2 as an excellent resource. He tests & reports on many HDR software packages – even discussing the differences in the algorythms used for combining images. (some of that is quite far over my head) Thanks again for all you share!!!
Hello John. I have tried Expose. I was not very impressed with it. I had a handheld image that I processed through it and no matter what I did I had a ghosting line around the image and it wasn’t directly around the edges, it was a good distance off 1/8 inch or more. That left a bad taste in my mouth for it. However, you are the third person to bring this program back up to me in less than a week, so I may need to look at it a bit more now.
I have become really fond of the Photomatix “look”. I like the detail it brings out that no other programs seem to be able to bring out. When it comes to all programs I have a tendency to believe we are all programmed to match one better than another. That doesn’t mean I wont try another program for a week or two either!
Thanks for sharing!