Few HDR's ... CC Please

Geaux · Feb 21, 2011

First time doing HDR's and I know I over did the fountain one, I noticed the halos, but couldn't do much to remove them. I actually HAD to overdo that one to get it to lighten up and show some detail

1. My favorite of the bunch. A part of me wishes I would have shot the whole door frame, but another part of me likes the way it is now.

2.

3. Here is the overdone one, notice the halos around the fountain in the center of the frame

Davor · Feb 21, 2011

Love the first one! such a nice contrast of colors. You did a good job on the HDR, usually people overcook them, but these seem subtle. I don't know if its just me, but if you where to rotate the first one by like a degree to the right, it be perfectly centered.

Robin Usagani · Feb 21, 2011

I like the first one. The 2nd and 3rd I dont think you bracketed them right. With HDR your sky should be blue or you see more definition of the cloud. What program did you use to merge them?

bevoholic · Feb 21, 2011

This may be a n00bish question, but I thought with HDR's the exposure was supposed to look correct across the entire picture? The sky looks really over exposed in number two. Maybe it's just my computer screen. Or maybe I'm completely wrong. Forgive me if I am.

JG_Coleman · Feb 21, 2011

bevoholic said:
This may be a n00bish question, but I thought with HDR's the exposure was supposed to look correct across the entire picture? The sky looks really over exposed in number two. Maybe it's just my computer screen. Or maybe I'm completely wrong. Forgive me if I am.

Indeed... blown-out highlights, for the most part, have no place in an HDR. And when I say "for the most part", I mean "almost never except in special circumstances". Ever since I've started to browse through the HDR C&C threads here, I've realized that this is a very common mistake. The "I did it that way because I like it that way" excuse doesn't work too well for HDRs either, since if the photographer was aiming for blown out skies, he or she could've just used a single exposure and at least maintained better quality (on the 1:1) in the foreground details.

There's really only two basic possibilities:

A) The bracketing wasn't spaced right or was centered around too bright an exposure. The result is that bracket lacks an exposure dark enough to keep the sky details.

B) The HDR processing wasn't carried out correctly. Since HDR software varies considerably in its controls, this could result from any number of incorrect settings.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the first one very much. The subject matter of the other two don't do much for me... they are of very ordinary looking places / things.

Catherine4483 · Feb 22, 2011

Love the last shot!

Geaux · Feb 22, 2011

JG_Coleman said:
Indeed... blown-out highlights, for the most part, have no place in an HDR. And when I say "for the most part", I mean "almost never except in special circumstances". Ever since I've started to browse through the HDR C&C threads here, I've realized that this is a very common mistake. The "I did it that way because I like it that way" excuse doesn't work too well for HDRs either, since if the photographer was aiming for blown out skies, he or she could've just used a single exposure and at least maintained better quality (on the 1:1) in the foreground details.

There's really only two basic possibilities:

A) The bracketing wasn't spaced right or was centered around too bright an exposure. The result is that bracket lacks an exposure dark enough to keep the sky details.

B) The HDR processing wasn't carried out correctly. Since HDR software varies considerably in its controls, this could result from any number of incorrect settings.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the first one very much. The subject matter of the other two don't do much for me... they are of very ordinary looking places / things.

Thanks for the comments yall. Truthfully, I probably did mess up the bracketing on 2/3 b/c it was the first time using it and wasn't sure of what I was doing. The sky itself looks like that throughout the three shots I took, so I probably didn't expose properly for the sky. Not sure if it would have worked though, the sky was pretty ugly. Clouds everywhere (the ugly ones with no shape lol), not much blue around (in regards to what Schwetty said) and the sun was almost down leaving a golden overexposed glow to the clouds.