A lonely shed - C&C

[Bitter Jeweler]

Clearly, it does appear to be.
Get rid of that dark nastiness in the sky. It ruins this image.

 

[fokker]

You mean in the top left corner? That's how it looked! Aside from the actual HDR conversion I didn't do any alterations on the image. As I understand it, the point of HDR is to re-create the scene exactly as the eye sees it, which I think I accomplished.

 

[Gaerek]

Is this a real HDR (multiple exposures, blended to bring out the detail in shadows in highlights) or a pseudo HDR (one shot, saved as multiple exposures at different EV values)? I only ask because the tree on the right has basically no detail to it. It's too dark. I'm guessing this is a single shot, and the tree was clipping the shadows, and lost detail.

As for C&C, it looks far too processed to me. I think I actually like the second version better, even with the muted colors. It looks more real.

 

[Olympus E300]

It doesn't look bad. My personal taste would be to aim for something between the last verion and the one prior. Again, that's just what I like...I may not have the best set of eyes when it comes to color saturation (or focus for that matter). I've been wearing corrective lenses since I was 5 years old. I'm terribly short sighted...LoL. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! So there!

Keep up the nice work!! Cheers!
- Dan

 

[fokker]

It is an actual HDR, made up from 5 images. I chose to darken the tree even though there was detail there, because it looked unnatural otherwise.

 

[Gaerek]

As I understand it, the point of HDR is to re-create the scene exactly as the eye sees it...

I chose to darken the tree even though there was detail there, because it looked unnatural otherwise.

Not to nitpick, but to our eyes, wouldn't the tree show detail?

Just so you know, I'm only asking because I don't think that the purpose of HDR is to re-create a "scene exactly as the eye sees it". I think that's part of it, but a more accurate description is to show the full dynamic range of a scene. A shot like what you posted, honestly, probably didn't need to be HDR. I could be wrong, but I highly doubt very much of the information in that scene was clipping shadows or highlights.

I think HDR done well, and in the right circumstances, can look outstanding. The best HDRs don't look fake, and the only reason you can tell they are HDR is because there's no way that a particular shot could have been made without it. Unfortunately (and, this shot isn't an example of this) people are using HDR on scenes that really don't need it, just for that cartoony, saturated, fake look. But I have to wonder why you decided to use HDR on this shot.

The bottom line is, if you like how something turns out, then it doesn't matter how you got there. If you believe this shot needed to be an HDR, then who am I to tell you that you shouldn't have used it?