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Your Hidden Creative Opportunities in high dynamic range photography.

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Never before so easy to take pictures of impossible to really discern, high dynamic range scenes, by simply capturing a rapid sequences of bracketed exposures of the same complexly lit scene. One simply aligns the images in software and combines the best parts of each separate shot, to give one image with information that was hidden from the naked eye!

So, this is very different from Bresson's street photography where the picture was framed to be seen, albeit with the help of slaves or assistants in the darkroom, to yield images that have lasted the competition and earned their way into our hearts and common cultural heritage.

Today, when we sit before a computer screen we can discover much that we didn't know of, planned for or even predicted was there! So should we not consider that these are just raw materials and the real beginning of the creative process. So in a way, the taking of the picture is the date. The making of the picture is the marriage, much more demanding but also more risky yet potentially overwhelmingly more rewarding.

Isn't it time that we recognize that we cannot properly compose a high dynamic picture unti we arrive home? A corollary would be that since we cannot be perfect in our framing, it would be wise to take extra adjacent overlapping areas adjacent to the main shot. That's because the needs of the composition only become obvious when the secrets become revealed: that at the edge of a field is a new and important element that could really make the new picture that has been born.

Or am I wrong. Are you so certain of what you want, that you can tackle a complex high dynamic scene and know exactly at the outset, where the borders must be?

Asher
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
I can follow your reasoning Asher and I have no problems if someone would shoot accordingly. Talking about myself, I don't see the link between the composition and hdr as you have suggested. I compose the picture first. The need to bracket for hdr or not is yet another decision to be made. If there are adjacent elements which I want to include in the picture, I either shoot wider or I stitch. But this decision is also made when shooting, not back at home. I know that the cutting off of some elements unadvertently is something which bothers you. If one is less sure of the final composition, by all means your advice is a great one to follow. In the end, it all depends on the experience of the photographer and his/her shooting style.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
If one watches the scene outside of the viewfinder, the elements brought by HDR are normally visible to the naked eye, since our eyes dynamic range is huge and is what HDR seeks to emulate.

This being said, what we see when we compose a picture depends considerably on the particulars of the photographer:
-we don't have all the same eyes, especially in low light (I see quite well in the dark, but know how wide the range is from astronomy parties)
-we don't use the same cameras and their capacities varies widely. For optical SLR viewfinders, it will depends considerably on the size and quality of the screen and optics. Rangefinders are in a category in themselves. Cameras presenting the image electronically have poor dynamic range, but may boost low light scenes to a level more comfortable to the people not seeing well at night and usually can present you with a HDR composite right on the spot.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Cem,

I give credit, admire and even try to emulate the Ansel Adams tradition of really investing in knowing the lighting of the scene. He'd be known for hanging around all day and not take the shot! He's plan and when he did make the picture, he's worked out all the lighting issues and where different zones of exposure would fall and the type of processing and even the contrast of the paper he matched for that scene and lighting.

I must admit that there are challenges in doing this and so many times. I would compose at the scene, hours before the actual shoot, surveying with no camera, just my fingers made into a frame. My previsits and estimates all went away once the war between me and a collapsing sunset began! Imagine, over The Ponte Vecchio. there's the width and depth of the scene, the need to get the changing sky and the dark water. Everything fights. Now with a digital setup, one can do much better, setting of sequences, panning and stitching. But this scene I know better than I know anything else. So I compose at the scene and that's what I take home.

Still, for anything new, with things changing, or pictures taken in the worst light, we do have surprises. So here, I offer that we should protect the investment in arriving at the location by increasing coverage. This advice applies not only to the inexperienced shooting landscape in a the plane of a winding river. She has no idea of how to frame this in the first place, so go wide!

Theres another aspect top this. not just that composition may need to change because of surprise revelations, but also because there will be rich new possibilites one never thought of on site! I'd wager, that the current capability to render what we see now as well as the surprises that could not imagine, there's a lot of creativity opened up to us from the same scene we thought we knew.

Should this prod us to alter the weights of different elements of one's dream picture? Surely there are new inventive possibilities that never occurred with the unaided human eye and one shot photography?

Or else, if this is not true, are we just relying on technical wizardry to perform an automatic shooting sequence? Really isn't this that's just, (to a more aggressive degree, and nuance-hungry level), like the grandmother with a modern digicam on auto, not touched by the fingerprints of the photographer! The only thing she has custody of here is the direction and coverage her little camera and timing of the shutter release. Just because that's stunning, is that sufficient? Should we also be making our own decisions on exploring the relative importance with which all the new richness of this wide dynamic range image should now be presented.

Surely, we cannot simply allow the camera and software to rank the sequence of relevance of all the increased information that our new photography voraciously gathers and assembles for us

So, I think we are really challenged. are we going to use the camera so we can draw an image or just make the image that the camera draws? We always had this choice, but now the richness of the digital images made from exposure bracketed sequences gives us richness previously unknown to most photographers of the past century!

Of course, Cem, your work in this regard is already sellar. I have no wish to have any of your work to date changed one iota! (Grandma can never do what you do as your first choices of location, timing and direction are so unique to you). Still, even with that, there could be room for turning what you see on its head and revolutionizing for yourself even beyond what you can achieve today! That's how much I believe we're being challenged by the wealth of enriched images.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
If one watches the scene outside of the viewfinder, the elements brought by HDR are normally visible to the naked eye, since our eyes dynamic range is huge and is what HDR seeks to emulate.

This being said, what we see when we compose a picture depends considerably on the particulars of the photographer:
-we don't have all the same eyes, especially in low light (I see quite well in the dark, but know how wide the range is from astronomy parties)
-we don't use the same cameras and their capacities varies widely. For optical SLR viewfinders, it will depends considerably on the size and quality of the screen and optics. Rangefinders are in a category in themselves. Cameras presenting the image electronically have poor dynamic range, but may boost low light scenes to a level more comfortable to the people not seeing well at night and usually can present you with a HDR composite right on the spot.


Jerome,

You make a good point on the differences with kind of viewing system. With the though the lens view, we really can't have enough awareness of anything outside the field. The rangefinder solves this problem, but until recently, it was behind in ISO sensitivity to compete for HDR pictures in low light.

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
are we just relying on technical wizardry to perform an automatic shooting sequence?

That is not the way HDR works. If you let the camera do it automatically, it will give you an average result, good enough to judge the composition maybe. But when one wants non-average results, there is some tone-mapping works to be done on the computer and that is basically the same work that one used to do with the zone system, but with different tools.

Only a fool would want to capture every light level that is on front of the camera, just as only a fool would want a lens that is sharp corner to corner (we had a running thread on lenses). Limited shadow detail just as limited depth of field are tools that we can use to our advantage.
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
I do use HDR (exposure fusion to be more precise) since many years now.
I always wanted to keep the images as real as possible.
In the beginning so many people looking at the prints thought these were 3Ds.
Certainly because we're not used to look at photograph that renders so much range of light.
Therefore, I now keep some white burned and some dark shadows. That's the price to pay when one wants the viewer to look at a "real" photo…

For the rest I fully agree with Cem (compose first, bracket or not), for me all these decisions have to be made prior of shooting.
Same for the positioning of moving persons, scapes and objects, one might one to think first and to be wised in order to economize hours of post-production…
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
That is not the way HDR works. If you let the camera do it automatically, it will give you an average result, good enough to judge the composition maybe. But when one wants non-average results, there is some tone-mapping works to be done on the computer and that is basically the same work that one used to do with the zone system, but with different tools.

Only a fool would want to capture every light level that is on front of the camera, just as only a fool would want a lens that is sharp corner to corner (we had a running thread on lenses). Limited shadow detail just as limited depth of field are tools that we can use to our advantage.

Jerome,

Exactly! :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I do use HDR (exposure fusion to be more precise) since many years now.
I always wanted to keep the images as real as possible.
In the beginning so many people looking at the prints thought these were 3Ds.
Certainly because we're not used to look at photograph that renders so much range of light.
Therefore, I now keep some white burned and some dark shadows. That's the price to pay when one wants the viewer to look at a "real" photo…

For the rest I fully agree with Cem (compose first, bracket or not), for me all these decisions have to be made prior of shooting.
Same for the positioning of moving persons, scapes and objects, one might one to think first and to be wised in order to economize hours of post-production…


Nicolas,

As I pointed out, professional vertical market photographers, are practical and dont waste post production costs. This is true of seasoned wedding photographers, who'll even divide the planned posed work between one team and a second crew for the milling guests at a reception. The first close to perfect at shutter release, the latter are corrected as needed by experienced tech in seconds.

My own studio work in Los angeles, planned beforehand with sketches and then when it's shot, it just has to be assembled. Still, my work in New York is shot in what I call guerilla warfare, (hit and run) style as there are no sketches, just ideas, limited time and general targets and a model I've just met with time and places across a city to reach with no permits.

The same must be true for other photographic art. There's no client paying for the shots for some agreed purpose for images to fit into. Here, one might not be able to either control or predict what's in the field of view, especially in public spaces, (where one has no control), but also where dynamic range sequential-shot capture of today, allows collection of so much more data than one could predict exactly in the composition. So I positing that for this class of creative photography, there's a major change in the clay in which image sculptures can be made today, albeit on flat surfaces.

You and Cem both have already absorbed these qualities into your masterful work.

All others, would never dream that you, Nicolas, tame the ends of the gray scale! Cem, with your latest pictures, folk would never ask a word of, they'd be so trapped in a dream-state of the world you lured them to!

Just for the artist with much road ahead, I commend to look at the latest files as raw material for which they would well consider interacting with iteratively, allowing their creation to also assert itself and create a dialog with what they thought their initiating idea and intent demanded of their nascent work of art. This would mean all elements have to win their place in a court of law for that work and not be there, as they are, by right of domain.

For your consideration, not some edict! :)

Asher
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Nicolas,

As I pointed out, professional vertical market photographers, are practical and dont waste post production costs. This is true of seasoned wedding photographers, who'll even divide the planned posed work between one team and a second crew for the milling guests at a reception. The first close to perfect at shutter release, the latter are corrected as needed by experienced tech in seconds.

My own studio work in Los angeles, planned beforehand with sketches and then when it's shot, it just has to be assembled. Still, my work in New York is shot in what I call guerilla warfare, (hit and run) style as there are no sketches, just ideas, limited time and general targets and a model I've just met with time and places across a city to reach with no permits.

The same must be true for other photographic art. There's no client paying for the shots for some agreed purpose for images to fit into. Here, one might not be able to either control or predict what's in the field of view, especially in public spaces, (where one has no control), but also where dynamic range sequential-shot capture of today, allows collection of so much more data than one could predict exactly in the composition. So I positing that for this class of creative photography, there's a major change in the clay in which image sculptures can be made today, albeit on flat surfaces.

You and Cem both have already absorbed these qualities into your masterful work.

All others, would never dream that you, Nicolas, tame the ends of the gray scale! Cem, with your latest pictures, folk would never ask a word of, they'd be so trapped in a dream-state of the world you lured them to!

Just for the artist with much road ahead, I commend to look at the latest files as raw material for which they would well consider interacting with iteratively, allowing their creation to also assert itself and create a dialog with what they thought their initiating idea and intent demanded of their nascent work of art. This would mean all elements have to win their place in a court of law for that work and not be there, as they are, by right of domain.

For your consideration, not some edict! :)

Asher

Asher

I'm not sure I understand all what you mean…

However some comments, on the fly…

Some software editors such as Phaseone and Adobe do speak about HDR with their software : one single shot and push the highlight and shadow sliders to their limit. OK that's kind of HDR. But not really, or just noth enough for me.

This goes to the normal PP work on standard files, extracting the (good) juice from the raw file. This can be of great help for the shotting scenario you described (hit an run).

About hit and run, that can be a good exercise, but I doubt this could be interpreted as an "intent".

For me, as an European, I have restricted understanding of what an artist is (and as such, I am not): an artist must have an intent, be able to "control or predict what's in the field of view".
Ok, I know I've declared a kind of war! lol!

Happy day to all!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher

I'm not sure I understand all what you mean…

Not surprising, Nicolas, I do go on a lot. But seriously, for your work, all the new tools are already updated into your being. Same with other equally successful pros.

This goes to the normal PP work on standard files, extracting the (good) juice from the raw file. This can be of great help for the shooting scenario you described (hit an run).

About hit and run, that can be a good exercise, but I doubt this could be interpreted as an "intent".

Intent? Guerilla warfare is also planned but the action is not so predictable as a surgical strike. I spend several hours with a selected person, (who turns my hear upside down), to be the central character of my New York work and map out a series of public places, known to her, all over the city, where she would be comfortable and we could reach in that day or the next. She has a change of clothes, that's it. I have a history of her life and her decision-making since teenage years and young adulthood, who encourage, inspired and blocked her and who gave her help or used her up. Then I create, in my mind, a dynamic but real 3D picture I see of the sort of activities and postures we might need. Then by taxi, train or boat we cover locations to carefully shoot and fill in the spaces. All without licence, even if it's climbing a wall or lying in the street on a patch of yellow cat's eyes for traffic control. So it's very stressful and frightening that I might not be able to make the absurd variations in place positon and lighting, all fit as "an undeniable whole" at the end of it all. So here's where it could be disastrous to be missing adjacent features, over which other crafted elements might better fit in my final assembly and fusion.

For me, as an European, I have restricted understanding of what an artist is (and as such, I am not): an artist must have an intent, be able to "control or predict what's in the field of view".

I'd modify that to state, " A paid cost-aware and therefore successful professional photographer must have an intent, be able to "control or predict what's in the field of view"

Artists, however, by contrast, must, even in Europe, be open to new experience at all times, especially when exporting their ideas to physical form. Why? Well, Nicolas, unlike work for clients with a strict goal, the artist must cede some power to the emerging life form, to "speak back" and fight with his/her creator.


Ok, I know I've declared a kind of war! lol!

ROTFWL! :)

Europe? This is England landing on French soil to liberate you from precise, committee ways of thinking and having you add milk to the cup, before the pouring in the patiently brewed tea, (from the select tips of the youngest stems).

Asher
 

doug anderson

New member
Except for in-camera HDR I haven't really done this. My D800 will shoot HDR but it requires a tripod. Any movement will show up as a ghost. Unless you want that effect, street shooting is out. But now that I think of it, it could be fun. People leaving their bodies in the city, etc.
 
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