The first thing that came to mind for me is HDR. HDR has not made much impact in the world of galleries or billboards when you look around. There are some amazing images that have been reconstructed into HDR by some real talented people. For myself, I've done a few and had good feedback, specially in the last six months or so.
I was reading a post by John Lang who is the chair for the NPPA's Ethic's & Stanards Comminttee on the Natianional Press Photographers Assocaiton website and they had what I guess was an example image by the well known HDR photographer, Trey Ratcliff, but it seems to have been taken down but the spot still is still there. But the subject was about several photography directors and picture editors asking about the ethical consideration of HDR photography and using HDR images in their publications. The short answer was no they couldn't be seen to be used because of the total editing of an image to make it more dramatic or less dramatic of the event that it covered would be un ethical in journalism of newspapers and such like.
Personally I get that, as the public have the right to see the actual image in its entirety, but with that said, HDR could be used in some advertisements to promote a product, but not to show it as a copy of a product but as an external support to a product, not sure if that makes sense or not, but it could help to give adverts that WOW factor which is what HDR images do.
The crazy thing is that maybe some photographers don't like HDR, same could be said that some don't like black and white or digital. But if you show an HDR image to a the general public alongside the normal, they will go for the HDR as the one they like, there is testimonial to this on the net.
Graphic art has made it to the galleries and exhibitions, but why hasn't HDR, what is so wrong that exhibitors aren't crying out for photographers work to be shown, I guess that's a big question that's been asked for sometime now and know one has done an interview or publish why they don't show HDR images.
When you start out HDR in our form, you get your five or seven images depending on what you doing sorted with different exposure at increments of +1 or -1, you need to them into a software that can batch images and use the tools for HDR like Photomatix. Photomatix has just released their latest version which is 5 and at first hand it looks good with the improvement.
The thing is that when you start out, its so easy to over cook an image as you keep moving sliders to get more dramatic than maybe a simple look that does the job. As you learn and read, this kind of software is only the first stage and you have to take the HDR into Photoshop and start working with some of the other exposures that you've taken as part on the main image. Layering, masking and painting with a tablet pen is what will give that rich and fine image that you've been working on creating.
It's where photographers can become artist with the canvas being the RAW images and the tablet pen and the paint brush.
It' s one of the great things about digital is that you can work all day on an image and then sit back and look to see if you feel its turned out how you envisage it to be, sometimes the vision can get obscured or something that you didn't think about can come into the image. But there is a flip side in that you can look at the finished piece and then decide that its not got what you were looking for, but you don't have to be totally dishearten as you can start from scratch as you have the original images to begin again.
Question - is HDR reality or unreality?
There are today two forms of HDR that can be a bit confusing. Some of the latest camera's or phones have what they call HDR capability, what they do is take three images at different exposures and then tie them together by the camera software. I have to say images done by camera like this do look real sharp and great colours. So that's one HDR.
The other is as mentioned using a software like Photomatix or NIK HDR and this turns the image into something that looks completely different to the camera version and takes the format to another level and produces an image that is very different from the camera version.
So you could say that a camera version is more reality and a software version is more unreality.
The unreality version has that great colour, contrast and look of depth, but then its also includes a look of fantasy or in some cases cartoon like as the colours and look are more pastel coloured and look more like a watercolour, this is a great look in itself, but the photographers that can make the images look magical and keep that realism of the image can create a fantasy and you could say stylish look to an image.
Google+ has a stepping stone for photographers working in HDR, they even have their own HDR software which is part of the NIK collection. So more has to be done to push this new and great photography or art, depending on how you see it.
When I spoke to my tutor about this assignment and using HDR, it was a question of why and how did I see it being part of unreality, the only word is that I can create a fantasy image with the use of the camera, to give the subject that fantasy look, I will then work on to create the unreality look in the image that I will put forward. I have to say I didn't get a feeling of enthusiasm from them, and maybe because they aren't a fan of HDR, but I hope that when done, they will see pass that and see through the process that I put into the raw image to finish with the edited image that will be unreality as its obscured like any other unreality image that's pulled apart in Photoshop to get the final look.
Thanks for reading, AndyD
No comments:
Post a Comment