1st try at HDR Please CC Lady in rust

pic_chick · Jan 11, 2013

This is a fire place cover I found in my grandma barn I want to show case the colors the rust has given it without making it look like an overbaked HDR acid trip. How did I do?

nycphotography · Jan 11, 2013

It doesn't look overdone... but the details look blotchy / noisy.

I see you used f4 and iso800. Maybe you should reshoot it at iso100 (less noise) @ f8 (sharper part of the lens) and use a tripod if you have to.

Composition wise, I also think, if I was going to frame this, I'd want more of whatever that detail is on the right, to be included the same amount on the left for balance.

Light Guru · Jan 11, 2013

This image does not need HDR. It's a relatively flat surface so there the dynamic range is quite low thus not needing a High Dynamic Range.

bigtwinky · Jan 11, 2013

I was going to say similar to Light Guru. No need for HDR in this image. Shoot in RAW and play with saturation, clarity, contrast and your levels to get it to pop.
But in terms of your HDR work, doesn't look overdone, hell, barely looks done at all. And you cut parts of the photo out, which is odd, but I assume you were just HDR shooting and not thinking much of the overall image

Light Guru · Jan 12, 2013

bigtwinky said:
I assume you were just HDR shooting and not thinking much of the overall image

Thats one of the biggest issues I think a lot of people that are using HDR have. They learn about HDR and discover that the technique it not hard to execute so they go HDR crazy and want to HDR just about envy thing they shoot. I will admit I overdid the use of HDR myself when I first learned about it I overdid it in my processing and in how often I used the technique.

However the more I have studied photography and studies the type of photographs I liked to view the most and the photographers that created them the more I realized that the way to create amazing images was to know what your final image would look like before pressing the shutter button. This means you see the image and then adjust your camera settings, choose HDR maybe and know what your most likely going to need to do in post to achieve the image you want. Every thing you do to the image is deliberate and planned.

Pressing the shutter button and them running home to see what you can make of the image on the computer is rarely going to work as good.