My 1st Successful HDR. C&C please

[q.c]

I know its not the best composition and angle but I think the hdr turned out nicely, I tried to not make it too much like a painting or cartoon but just wanted to get it somewhere in the middle.

 

[Lephty]

I like it alot. The only thing I would personally change would be get rid of the building and other 2 cars so you have just the parking lot, sky and the car,

 

[q.c]

yeah im gonna try to do some editing I would have liked to take the pic without all the other stuff, but it was at a car show and its hard to get a good pic or angle with all the people and other cars around. thanks for the c&c

 

[indeedies]

Nice! What editing program did you use to get this?

 

[q.c]

thank you. i used canon digital photo pro to generate the 3 different exposures from my raw file. then i made the hdr in photomatix pro

 

[manaheim]

To be frank...

- You're not really getting any serious extension of dynamic range off of a single exposure even when you take advantage of some of the extra leeway you have with a RAW. You can see this in the harsh shadows and contrast extremes in your image. Generally an HDR would not have these quite so noticably.
- The treatment of the image is a little surreal, but this is entirely a "taste" thing. I prefer to make my HDRs look as normal as possible... some people prefer to go way funkier.
- The composition of the image itself is kinda lacking... if this was just an EDR/HDR experiment, then who cares, but the composition of the image should come first FOLLOWED by an HDR treatment when one is required.

If you can forgive me posting images in your thread, let me give you a couple examples.

This particular image was a case where I needed the HDR in order to be able to see both the exterior and interior of the building when I had a SIGNIFICANTLY brighter light outside than in that the camera simply would not be able to compensate for...

Now in this next image I wanted to capture a fuller range of tones and shadows that would be impossible with a single exposure. There was an added benefit of not blowing out the windows on the ceiling, but they weren't so bright that it would have really been an issue. The key here was the rich tones in the woods and books and such.

Both of these images were about 5 exposures, spaced 2-3 stops apart, and in each the composition choice was made first and then a decision to perform an HDR process was made second.

Hope this helps.

 

[q.c]

thx for the advice number 2 looks great.

 

[FattyMcJ]

Wow, beautiful car and it's actually a pretty nice photograph.

Was this a "car show" or just a nice car you noticed in a parking lot?

If car show, I'm surprised the owner didn't clean the mud off the tires and polish the chrome, maybe you could do some PP to fix the mud, but I think the chrome is beyond fixing.

 

[q.c]

it was at a caR show but this was outside in the parking lot. im guessing it was most of the cars that wouldnt fit inside the building the car show was held in. there was only 10 or 15 cars outside and they werent in perfect condition