Don’t Forget Photography

HDR photography has been around for a while and continues to be a ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ type of thing.

I am not one of those people who avoid HDR like the plague and, at best, I have dabbled around with multiple exposure images.  I do enjoy playing around with it and can most definitely admire the skill of photographers who create quality HDR photographs but is there not an argument for non HDR images?

What if we think of it this way.

An HDR image is made up of various exposures in order to create an image that closer resembles what we see with our eyes.  The reason for this is that your digital cameras sensor cannot see the same range of light that your eyes can.  In other words, by  taking multiple exposures you are trying to ‘fix’ the camera’s shortcoming in creating images that mimic what we see.

Now, instead of arguing whether HDR is an easy way to cheat the camera’s inabilities or a lazy way of photography let’s rather take another approach.

Why not embrace the camera’s dynamic range.  Yeah, use the camera’s inability to capture the entire spectrum from dark to light.

Check this out.  The photograph of a lion is an HDR image.

I created three differently exposed images from the original RAW file and blended them to create on high dynamic range image.  Looks realistic enough doesn’t it?  Another benefit is that the dappled shade is a lot less distracting when compared to the original image.

No problem so far but think about this.  Even though I did a very quick HDR composite I spent a lot more time on the computer creating the picture than I did metering, composing the image and clicking the shutter.  More PC time than actual camera time.  Yeah yeah I know.  It’s a necessary evil but do you agree with that?

Now coming back to embracing your camera’s limited dynamic range.  Compared to the above HDR image, what are your thoughts on the following photograph?

This is the photograph I was hoping to get when we saw the lion in Madikwe.  By metering and manually exposing for the highlights in the frame, in this case the lion’s nose, I ended up deliberately underexposing the darks in the frame rendering it as almost pure black leaving a dramatic and moody image.

Better than the HDR version?  Guess it depends on who you ask but I feel it is still a good image.

The important thing here is that there was minimal post processing done to this image.  No blending of exposures.  No S-curve adjustments.  It’s just a photograph.  Plain and simple.

If you know your camera it is not difficult to create dramatic exposures.  The difficult thing is to ‘see’ the subtleties of light which will translate to dramatically exposed images.  A shaft of light or dappled shade does not have to mean bad images.  Think about the light, expose correctly and you will find images everywhere!

There are arguments for and against HDR but whatever side of the fence you sit do not forget the basics.  Don’t forget what you can do with your camera.  Don’t forget photography.

What are your thoughts?

Gerry