Category: Contrast

Why HDR?

Many photographers think HDR is a bad thing and avoid it like the plague. But it’s harmless and can be useful. Read on….

Why HDR?

For many photographers, the term HDR is associated with a style of photography that is rather absurd – the grunge look.  I’ve heard experienced photographers say they don’t use HDR because they don’t like the results.  When the beta version of Photomatix, a product created by HDRsoft, made its debut on November 20, 2008, it automated a manual process that landscape photographers were using at the time.  Occasionally, they would encounter situations where the dynamic range of the scene they wanted to photograph was greater than what the dynamic range their camera’s sensor could capture.  So, they took two shots at different exposures that, when put together, covered the whole dynamic range of the scene.  Then they stacked the two images in Photoshop and created masks to expose the highlights from the underexposed image and the shadows from the overexposed image.  The final result was an image that captured the full dynamic range of the scene.  Photomatix simplified this process by doing the blending.  But instead of blending just two images Photomatix could blend three, four or even five images.

Photomatix also gave the photographer a choice on several different ways of blending the images.  Grunge was just one of them and it took off like wildfire.  There were a few grunge photos that were excellent, but most were mediocre at best.  For many people, HDR became associated with the grunge look which gave it its bad name, and it became poor taste to shoot HDR.

But dealing with dynamic ranges in a scene that exceeds the technologies of the day wasn’t new.  It goes back to the beginning of photography in the 1860s.  After all, all cameras so far have a limit to the dynamic range they can capture whether they use Daguerreotypes, wet plates, dry plates, film or digital.

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Images with Impact – Contrast in Nature

Explore how haze affects the contrast in distant objects, how humans respond and how that knowledge can be used in your photographs.

Last year I started a series of articles under the general theme of Images with Impact. In it we are discussing things you can do with your images in Lightroom and Photoshop to enhance their impact. When I got to the topic of contrast I came to an abrupt halt. The more I thought about contrast, the more I wanted to begin that discussion with some real examples from nature. But to do that, I needed some photographs that illustrated what I wanted to share with you. And in Southern California, the types of photographs I wanted are only possible in winter. But it’s winter now. And I’ve been able to capture the photographs that I want, so now we’re picking up the series again.

What distinguishes a photograph created by the serious student of photography from one taken by a casual photographer? Many things to be sure. But one thing that stands out is a sense of clarity, a clear quality. The casual photographers’ photographs are just what the camera captures and are often like looking through a bit of haze and I don’t mean that they are out of focus. It’s the light. The effect may be subtle but it is very real. A more accomplished photographers’ photographs have a special quality to them, a quality that engages us, that draws us in and holds our attention. You might describe it as a crisp quality.  (You can click on the photographs to enlarge them.)

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(My daughter some years ago as we hiked out of a late spring backpacking trip in the local mountains.)

The serious student of photography skillfully applies contrast in the digital darkroom to achieve this look. But before getting in to how this is done, let’s step back and take a look at how we respond to contrast not only in photographs but also in nature.

In the following discussion I will use examples from nature to illustrate the affect contrast has on us. The idea is to understand how it works so that we can more effectively apply this knowledge to our photographs.

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