Wow, I
just became aware of HDR photography in the last week or two, with those Bride/Groom HDR's Kanikula posted. This is partly because it's still a fairly new process (or so I've heard), but also because I always seem to be a little behind everyone else.
In just the last week, though, I've started seeing them
everywhere! There is some truth to just x joey's comment that this will soon become the "new selective color", but the question is "Is that a bad thing?". Of course, the answer to that will vary from person to person.
The truth is that while trends like this come and go, but no matter how over-used they are at their peak, there are always people who will continue to like them. The "common folk" that have no idea how easy the process is in Photoshop are especially impressed, and eat these kind of "fancy" pictures up. In fact, I'm getting ready to do a senior portrait session with this girl
dead-set on doing a cheesy selective color portrait with a flower (can't get much more cliche than that). I'll bet that, regardless of how well-done the picture may be, they'd be a lot less impressed with the result if they knew just how simple it that is, and that it'd only take me about three minutes to complete (and that's if my computer's running slow). Well, anyway, I have some strong feelings about selective coloring, and I just don't know how to bring myself to do it without feeling just a little foolish. But if I must ...
I'm digressing here, on to your pictures, NJMAN:
In short, I like it. Maybe if it were two months later and I had seen this after fifty million other HDR images among the art sites I frequent, I'd feel a bit differently. I'd like to think that I wouldn't, and that I'm able to examine a piece of art based on its own merit without comparing to others, but that's so hard to do.
It is really easy to over-brighten HDR's, though, to the point where everything in the picture - from the subject to the background - is battling for the eye's attention. Like Sw1tchFX mentioned, using a speedlight would help solve this before you even began post-processing (I really like your edit, Switch, by the way).
Perhaps in the future, you could use Photoshop in conjunction with Photomatix (assuming that's what you are using), or are you already? In Photoshop, I find myself doing a lot of burning and dodging to my HDR images. Also, I personally prefer a much more subtle effect on my pictures. So in Photomatix, I initially create a fairly extreme, surreal HDR. I then bring it back into Photoshop, lay it over a copy of the original image, and turn down the opacity on my HDR layer. I feel this is the best way to control the amount of the effect. And I'll even erase portions of it, say, to retain the effect on the sky or on clothing, but bringing it off skin some (or altogether). You could call it a "Selective HDR", I kind of like it.
Anyway, good work, NJMAN, and just keep experimenting! Excuse my long, rambling post!
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