Shack revisted

redls1bird · Aug 27, 2007

A while ago I posted a picture of a shack near where i live. Well, ive since been messing around with HDR and decided that the original shack image could use that treatment. Tell me, what do you think?

Heck · Aug 27, 2007

Wow, now thats a burst of color there. I like it.

Deadeye008 · Aug 27, 2007

Very nice HDR. Love the sky.

nealjpage · Aug 27, 2007

I like it a lot. Looks like a scene shot on Velvia 50 and then digitized some way. The composition is nice, and I think that the effect makes an ordinarily stark scene look more interesting.

Now, I have to ask: What's HDR, besides a world-wide engineering/architecture/planning firm?

LaFoto · Aug 28, 2007

Amazing how this photo seems to have some 3-D effects... the trees and the roof tiles seem to be BULGING and taking up a bit of a rounded shape! Wow. And this is ONE photo of a centred composition where the centred composition works perfectly!

nealjpage, if I may just quote myself from out of another thread in which a member asked what is the meaning of HDR?

LaFoto said:
High Dynamic Range.

In the best of cases, you take at least three photos of the same thing, with the camera never moving, in three different exposure steps. One photo exposes for the brightest part (which will throw all dark parts into underexposure), one exposes for the midtones ("normal" exposure), and one exposes for the shadow parts (throwing all that is bright into glaring overexposure). You can achieve even better results if you up the odd number of photos you take.

Later, in post processing, you layer all your exposures one above the other, and then comes this (to me still unexplored and therefore kind of "magic") thing of "tone mapping" where you adjust all the newly to be seen highlight and shadow areas so that you end with a very dynamic (with regards to the distribution of the light) picture. "Dynamic" meaning: the range of areas that are correctly exposed is much wider than what the camera could ever manage to do in one photo only.

That is the idea as I understand it.
I don't understand the MAKING-OF HDRs too well so far, though.
I have created a few, and was pleased with ONE, but I often lack both time and patience for them - and my tripod is too sketchy for the "real" HDRs (with three, five, seven or more photos) and I get "where-are-my-glasses" pics in the end, and as I understand it, changing exposure values of a RAW file later in the RAW programme to create three or five different exposures is not considered the "true HDR-technique" ...

redls1bird · Aug 28, 2007

Thanks for the compliments! Hdr is fun because you can really make some images turn into what your mind saw it as when you took the picture.

lockwood81 · Aug 28, 2007

Wow, that is an eye catching HDR. Love the colors.

Just wish the sky through the doorway was as dak blue as the rest of the picture.

Alex_B · Aug 29, 2007

hmm, actually, it hurts my eyes. For me it is wayyy to colourful, like candy or cake which is too sweet to even get a bite down. The HDR plastic like look seems to work here, but if only the colours were less saturated.

And no, it is not like Velvia 50 ... Velvia 50 is much more pleasing to the eye ... at least to my eye

LaFoto · Aug 29, 2007

Alex, in this case all I can recommend is to have a cup of strong coffee along with this ... erm ... the iced cake ... erm ... too sweet things can thus be flushed down more easily

.

Alex_B · Aug 29, 2007

LaFoto said:
Alex, in this case all I can recommend is to have a cup of strong coffee along with this ... erm ... the iced cake ... erm ... too sweet things can thus be flushed down more easily .

Well, I flush them down elsewhere

midnitejam · Aug 29, 2007

Beautiful creation. The HDR and Post Proc'ing is great. Composition doesn't matter when the image is this beautiful.

Alex_B · Aug 29, 2007

midnitejam said:
Beautiful creation. The HDR and Post Proc'ing is great. Composition doesn't matter when the image is this beautiful.

only well composed images are beautiful. Some might be composed well by accident and without intention though.

This one is sort of well composed in my eyes by the way, highly symmetrical, but it serves the scene.