HDR Sucks!!!

Yep, I chuckled a couple times and spent the whole article smiling (even through a couple grammar errors). "Friends don't let friends do HDR"... that would be a cool signature.
 
A funny little article... I also had to take a look at the link to the "slightly mean" website (at the bottom). Good times...

I was able to enjoy this largely because the author at least made fair mention that HDR isn't always crap... just that 90% of the HDRs created by the general populace tend to be terrible photographs.... which is true.

I like HDR, really... but I am well-aware that its more abused than used. I don't like many of the HDRs I see, but I don't hate the technique, at all. It'd be like referencing a Geo Metro and arguing that every automobile is junk.
 
That was kinda pointless... :lol: (the article)

It was just some dude raving.
 
I see he added Bynx's quote to his page. :lmao:
 
It's amazing how someone can have so much hate over a photographic style, I mean set aside whether or not you appreciate the aesthetics of any kind of post processing... I wonder if he works at a post office...
 
Well you put some words together but didnt say anything. What I want to know is whether you agree with his sarcasm or not.
 
I'm still pretty new to photography in general, so let me see if I understand this article...

A lot of people do HDR poorly, so they should stop.
One's left to assume the people that do HDR poorly are new to it.

So no one should ever start doing anything, ever?
 
I'm still pretty new to photography in general, so let me see if I understand this article...

A lot of people do HDR poorly, so they should stop.
One's left to assume the people that do HDR poorly are new to it.

So no one should ever start doing anything, ever?

Truthfully, many rabid HDR-haters would tell you that HDR is a "terrible habit to get into in the first place"... like smoking or gambling or shooting guns in public.

What it really tends to boil down to is this: beginners take many bad photographs. That's pretty much understood and generally accepted... you need to make mistakes to get better. As it happens, though, when a beginner tries their hand at HDR they seem to fall into this mindset that there's some overwhelming difference between an HDR and an ordinary photograph. As if the fact that it's an HDR means that all other considerations of a decent photograph can be ignored... because, after all, "it's an HDR".

But an HDR truly NEEDS the same attention as any ordinary photograph to be good... good subject matter, good composition, good focus, good depth-of-field, etc, etc. The mere fact that it's an HDR counts for nothing if the photo itself is garbage. And, in a way, it's even worse than a bad photograph... since it's not just a bad shot, but a bad shot that comes off as trying to stand on the mere fact that it employs what, in this case, amounts to a processing gimmick. For people that already think of post-processing as "cheating" in one way or another, this epitomizes their whole argument that "people take bad photos these days and think they can just process away the crappiness."

Because of this phenomenon where HDRs are produced merely for the novelty of making an HDR of some totally random, entirely uninteresting scene... the entire technique is denounced by individuals that just don't like the aesthetic.

The other problem is that a badly-processed HDR usually looks ten times worse than an ordinary photograph that isn't very good. You see the ugly, pronounced halos, the exaggerated ghosting artifacts, the poorly balanced exposure blending... it's just horrendous. It makes you look at the photo and think," If that were just an ordinary photo of the same scene... it'd still be a bad photo... but it's even WORSE when it looks ridiculous like this."

Granted, it's all generally in the name of education. Ideally, people learn from their failed attempts and eventually get better and produce impressive HDRs that really make the most of the technology. But, in the meantime, the HDR haters (people that just don't like the aesthetic for reasons of taste or principle) find a whole lot of justification and leverage for arguing that the technique is universally awful. Thus, the article mentioned by the OP...
 

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