continued…

So since my naive HDR beginnings I have learned a lot more about the various settings and sliders in Photomatix Pro and, more importantly, I’ve learned to “back off” a bit in using them. But a curious thing happened along the way- as I backed off on the effect so as to not make any of the purist elite barf on their keyboards, I noticed that I was bracketing shots, spending a lot of time processing the shots in Photomatix, and then spending a lot more time correcting all the “wonky” things bracketing and photomatix do (like to skies, and also dealing with ghosting issues). And in the end, with my toned down, tasteful HDR results, I could get a very similar look by simply boosting clarity and vibrance in Lightroom. And if I added a bit of simple targeted dodging or burning, or brought the image into Photoshop for some minor tweaking, I could get even closer to the tonemapped HDR result. So I started to wonder, why even bother? By bracketing at capture, I’m filling up cards quickly, schlepping around a tripod, needing to connect a remote shutter release at every stop. And then I’m also filling up my computer hard drive with 3X or 5X every image… I don’t like deleting the originals for the reason I alluded to earlier- sometimes our tastes change, or our skill development over time, and this makes us want to go back and re-process images.

I do recognize that the bracketed HDR result is potentially giving me more dynamic range than is possible with any amount of post processing witchcraft… but it’s really hard to keep the finished look subtle enough to be accepted as a photo vs photo-art. And I’m not a purist myself, but I have noticed that I tend to embrace and overdo these gimmicky things and then regret it later. By the time I correct all the funky haloes, sky artifacts, noise, ghosting etc in many of my bracketed series put through Photomatix, I end up with an image that looks very tame. So tame, in fact, that it hardly looks HDR at all. That is what the “real” photographers appreciate, isn’t it?

Is the HDR honeymoon over for me? Nah, I think I have come a long way in my photomatix skills and realizing what needs to be done AFTER Photomatix to correct the resulting tonemapped image. Those skills will still come in handy for some shots… I’ve always contended that current DSLRs, despite all their impressive technological developments, still cannot capture the dynamic range in a scene the way the human eye sees it… not even close… so HDR is a tool to help get it more real… if used in moderation… suck on that, purists!

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