It’s a while since I posted a picture like this, created from multiple exposures and blended so as to keep detail in areas of bright and dark at the same time. I do so today prepared for the fact that it is a technique that some people absolutely detest. But it’s a photographic technique all the same, and with the prevailing light that there was when I captured this scene it was about the only way I could get a decent image. A little refresher on the technique and a brief look at some of the other options that could have worked follow.
The technique itself – HDR photography – is well documented online and I’ve blogged about it many times, but more often than not I tend to use what I call a pseudo-HDR approach where I take a single RAW file, and in post-processing create three separate exposure points from that one RAW file – the correct exposure, one 2 stops under, and one 2 stops over – and merge them using the Photomatix HDR plugin for Aperture 3.
For this photograph I recognized the problems in the scene at the time of shooting – the light was such that it was simply not possible for me to get one capture in-camera that exposed the sky and the foreground correctly at the same time. The sky would be blown out, or the foreground would be underexposed. In this situation, there are a few options available to you.
The one I chose was to go the HDR route and I took three exposures in quick succession, using the built in bracketing function in the camera to give me the -2, 0 and +2 stop exposures that I wanted. The rest became straight forward post-processing in software.
If I was a true landscape photographer, I may have had in my bag a gradiated neutral density filter or two and I could have placed that in front of the lens to darken the part of the frame containing the sky while leaving the foreground exposure correct. That would have given a different (and perhaps more natural) feel to the image, but you could argue it wouldn’t really be any more representative of the scene as it actually was.
If I was a Photoshop whizz, I could have taken a straight shot, exposing for the middle ground, and dodged and burned the hell out of it to bring detail back into the highlights and shadows. This would have been more natural a result also, but probably quite a bit of work.
The most realistic way of capturing the scene, true to how it was, would have been the fourth option – returning at a later (or earlier) time, when the balance of ambient light in the sky and on the balcony was better suited to the dynamic range of the camera. That option would most definitely give the best photograph, and the one that most accurately captured the scene, with the least effort, apart from a little patience.
As it was though I was on my holidays and didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time waiting for the light, so I settled for the HDR approach. And actually, I kind of like the final image, though I have some reservations about it.
The scene itself is the view from the balcony of the room we had at Seafield Hotel near Gorey in Co. Wexford – a place I recommend highly for a nice relaxing break from it all. And if you’re into golf, that’s part of the hotel’s golf course that you can see in the photo.
The reason I think most (well, at least me) hate hdr is the people that go overboard. This isn’t bad, aside from the sky not looking “correct” but can’t place what it is, maybe too dark compared to rest of of image? The ones that I don’t like are the ones that do +/- 4 stops so it no longer looks like the actual scene. Sure, this can be called “artistic” but when every picture looks like it, then it’s just annoying.
(begin flickr explore rant)
What’s worse is if you ever go to the explore section of flickr you see them all the time and people giving super high praise for it. Although maybe I’m just jealous at explorer since I honestly think I’ve taken a couple good pictures but instead the pictures you see on there (I haven’t checked it in weeks but I’m sure it still applies) are hdr, people doing the heart with their hands–ususally a woman that’s pregnant, self portaits almost exclusively women only, in fact if you see any guys they’ll probably be close up rough-and-tuff looking, long exposure shots, and… I’m sure I’m missing something but you get the idea. In fact I’ll put my proverbial money where my mouth is. Here is the set from my photo-a-week project I’m doing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrillusions/sets/72157623163812700/ now look at explore (so as not to bias the above rant I’m not going there) and there are several there that are similar in quality to what winds up on explorer.