morbidsteve's HDR thread

[morbidsteve]

As others have done, I will be starting a thread to post some of my favorite HDRs. I welcome any comments and critiques, as I'm always trying to improve. I'm going to post probably 2-3 per day.

As of this time, I'm only using Photomatix Essentials to do these, as I'm not the best with image editing software, and I have GIMP on a rMBP. That being said, I won't be purchasing Photoshop in the near future, so I'll be staying with GIMP and Photomatix or other free software.

Thanks for your input everyone.


Philadelphia Cityscape2 Comcast Center by morbidsteve, on Flickr



E State Pen Bench by morbidsteve, on Flickr

 

[Parker219]

These are just my opinions.

1. I dont see how HDR helped at all here. All it seemed to do is put a halo around the buildings and CA ( in this case purple fringe ) around the light post. Overall the composition is so far ( to me ) that this shot never had a chance.

2. MUCH BETTER! I love HDR on stone and brick. This stone really pops and to me looks really old and cool. The bright light coming in the window distracts a little from what should be the main focus which is the stone, however I think with some more post processing, this might be able to become a really great picture. I dont get why that 1 little seat or whatever that is in the middle of the aisle is, but I wish it wasnt there. I would like to see some more HDR from the same location as your second shot.

Anyway, good luck with your future shots, hope to see you around.

 

[JRE313]

#2 is really good

 

[fokker]

#2 is the best, but it lacks contrast and clarity. The HDR conversion can sometimes make a picture look less sharp, I usually bump up the contrast, clarity and sharpness a ton in lightroom after converting to HDR. If you look at the histogram for this you can see there are almost no blacks or shadows - the point of HDR isn't to compress the entire tonal range so much that you have neither blacks nor whites in the final picture.

 

[morbidsteve]

Thanks for your comments guys. @Parker219, thanks for the input. I see what you're saying about the first shot. I think the reason I found the photo so attractive is that where I'm from we don't have skyscrapers, so the buildings in the image are astounding to me, I didn't look at it from the perspective you did. I will take that into consideration in the future. Also, the second shot, is from a locked wing of the Eastern State Pen, so I can't really do anything to change the subject matter in the photo, and I got there shortly before closing, so I didn't have time for waiting for the light coming through to pass.

@fokker, Thanks for your input as well. Unfortunately I'm not so hot on the post processing so far and I'm a very basic photo man. I've been wiggling around with GIMP and a couple other programs to see what I can do to these photos, and just haven't been able to get myself to pay for photoshop yet (though I'm leaning more and more towards purchasing it). I'll take a look at the histogram tonight in GIMP and see if I can work with it and make it better.

Thanks everyone