Sneem, Co. Kerry

I posted a shot yesterday which was a HDR image – a single image from multiple exposures – and in that case, processing the shot as a HDR was primarily functional – i.e. the dynamic range of the scene was too large for the camera to handle and I reckoned I could get a more detailed image with a high dynamic range process.  HDR can also be used for artistic effects to create cartoon- or paint-like images.  It’s a love-it or hate-it type of photography anyway, but especially when used to this extreme.

A few months ago, just after I had begun to experiment with HDR, I tried out this extreme processing while photographing a landscape in Sneem.  I was in Sneem, you might recall, for Fiona and John’s wedding, and before heading back to Dublin there was time to take in some of the local scenery and I came away with some images I really like.

The main photographic point of interest in Sneem is a bridge over the river, which affords an impressive view to the mountains beyond, with the same river meandering via some rocks through the scene.  It must be one of the most photographed parts of Kerry judging from the number of people who stopped to take virtually the same photograph that I took.

When photographing something that is frequently photographed, it’s nice to try to come up with an alternative take, and this prompted me to try out a pushed-to-the-extreme look for a HDR shot.  The approach is the same as other HDR looks – in this case I took 5 exposures from -4 stops to +4 stops around the “normal” exposure. To determine what the normal exposure was I used matrix metering to meter across the whole scene,  and used aperture priority mode to allow me to select a reasonable aperture to give good depth of field – enough for sharpness throughout the frame, but not too much to require a tripod at the slower shutter speeds for the overexposures.  In this case f/8 kept the shutter speed between 1/6400s and 1/25s, and shooting at 22mm this meant all exposures could be achieved without a tripod.

Ideally actually a tripod would be used to keep the framing identical, but I had left mine in the car so relied on a steady hand, a rapid burst of images, and the ability of the HDR processing software to realign images in post processing.

The straight out of the camera shot is the thumbnail above – click on it for a larger view – and you can see that the image is pretty good (apart from flare due to a dirty spot on the lens which I didn’t notice until after the fact, and which unavoidably makes its way into the final HDR shot also. Oops!)

So I imagine most people on this day came away with very nice shots of the scene… albeit also very similar shots of the scene.  Processing the HDR I pushed the light smoothing controls to the extreme to give this extremely detailed look, almost like a pencil drawing.  The effect is even more extreme in the printed version of the shot, and it shows up detail in the rocks, the trees, and the water that you’d almost convince yourself wasn’t even there.

It’s rare that I would push a HDR shot to this type of look – in general I aim for them to be more subtle – but if you don’t experiment with a look you can’t be sure whether or not it’s for you, and at least I have a shot of this part of Sneem that is probably different from the majority of shots out there.