Return of "rise of the radioactive hdrs".

[eikin]

I didn't intend it to be a smiliarity comparison, my point is that differences are good, I am not at all into HDR, but it would have been prematurely terminating a discussion I think worthy of further understanding what TS's beef was.

From what I understood TS is pissed by lack of quality... but that goes with any kind of photography isn't it? composition is composition no matter what type of photography one is interested in.

My 2 cents.

../azul123

differences are indeed very good. but differences are good doesn't mean that all differences must be celebrated.

i lost you on the second paragraph :dunno:

 

[night86mare]

That's the thing... when you have done HDR for so long of course it looks down right lack of quality compare to the images you deplore, imagine someone just started learning the techniques and you said "I implore all alike to stay away from these" how are people going to improve?

Everybody got to start somewhere somehow... Guide them, if you still cannot stand then leave them be and that was why I say don't like don't see.

../azul123

haiz, bro. i didn't tell them to stay away from hdr..

i just wished that everybody would bother to go through the proper tutorials, spend more time looking at good hdrs, and bad hdrs. there are loads of hdrs on the net, it is my personal opinion probably that the people producing bad works have only seen the bad hdrs. i used to do it too, but it didn't seem right to me, so i didn't really post up that many hdr pictures. spent more time looking through pictures on the net - classmates in my school used to comment that i seemed to spend more time looking at pictures during breaks than anything else.

i understand that people are new - i also try to guide them as to what sort of settings they should be achieving; at the same time i also wonder if i am doing it correctly. i'm sure you get what i mean. if i go around shoving my tone mapping (part of hdr process) settings down people's throats, then it would restrict experimentation and perhaps a much better process that what i have found out to be good for myself. there is also a desire to let others experiment - but experimentation is fine and dandy, it's hard to say it.

it's just like how i feel about freedom of speech. sure, it's good, you get more opinions, and therefore a chance to get good ones.

at the same time, you are going to get real fruitcakes - a walk in hyde park speaker's corner sometime with the drunkards out in full force never fails to remind me that perhaps, sometimes it is indeed over-rated. you are right, i have actually taken to ignoring some people's postings in critique corner already.

as to what i hoped to achieve with that last thread, it was quite a number of things -

1) ask people's opinion on whether they find any value in overdone hdr, open up my eyes. sometimes people provide good examples on how it is well done. as of now i can only think of dave hill like effect, and even then it is definitely not done the way i have mentioned.

2) hopefully when people do a search on hdr in clubsnap they will find the thread and read about why people like me feel that overdone hdr is bad

3) encourage people to focus less on the funny effects achieved in hdr, concentrate more on composition and other basics first. there is no point posting up a poorly composed photo with landscape tilts, even if it is the most realistic hdr in the world.

cheers, and have a safe trip.

 

[Leong23]

I think this is very clear already. If your photo can strike people's interests, the rest does not matter. Don't take it to heart how fervidly others criticise your works or even your brains. Also, to all newbies, never stick to mainstream for too long. It will kill you. Time has changed. The influx of more young and aggressive photographers in the industry makes it more critical to establish style and creativity. Why are there so many photographers and so few stand out? Because very few are unique. Therefore, if you think you have developed a unique style, defend your work and, by all means, share them with us.

Sorry...maybe i'm still staying in the past...

To be, newbie should stick on to mainstream and master his/her basic. Style can't be train, nor appear overnight. Style will only come when it come, and it is through hard work.
Style shouldn't be an excuse for badly taken photo.

Maybe night86mare is unhappy because lots of bad HDR photo floating around but many people still blindly give praises, which evenually mislead lots of people.

p.s. night86mare, maybe this post will answer the question you ask me in my APAD.

 

[leews2001]

hdr is a very, very very powerful tool which can overcome the limitations of a digital sensor, and present scenes as the photographer saw it to the world.

Alas, but the lazy fast-food nation majority are not ready for such useful technology. Let them evolve at their own pace. But you don't have to wait for them.

 

[night86mare]

p.s. night86mare, maybe this post will answer the question you ask me in my APAD.

ha, i knew you were going to tell me sooner or later

 

[night86mare]

Alas, but the lazy fast-food nation majority are not ready for such useful technology. Let them evolve at their own pace. But you don't have to wait for them.

you know, i knew i had a good example of unconventional art and processing technique (though possibly not hdr) being a positive example, i.e. i cannot like all the works but i can appreciate what is going on. it just escaped my mind who that was, i was digging through my head for someone like that.

has to be you.

for all those reading this who do not understand, take a look at leews2001 works on flickr. not conventional, not common, also sometimes majorly processed to surrealism standards, but there is a CONCEPT, there is an idea of what he is doing.

that, i can appreciate a lot better than just applying a technique for the sake of applying it. every now and then i like to look at your pool, bro.

cheers!

 

[contaxable]

HDR is something very nice to me. It belongs to art and i suppose there will be no real right or wrong since the original image had bee twisted away from the real picture. It looks more like saturated cartoon art to me actually.

Until today, I still want to improve on my picture taking skills. Software is to me an expensive investment (esp where time is concerned) and hence i would use my knowledge in exposure and lenses to control a desired effect. If i failed, then i would pick myself up and try again instead of picking up the wacom pen to dab & compensate.

One day, I hope to learn hdr and who knows, I may fall in love with it, too.

 

[Leong23]

HDR is something very nice to me. It belongs to art and i suppose there will be no real right or wrong since the original image had bee twisted away from the real picture. It looks more like saturated cartoon art to me actually.

Maybe this is another misleaded soul.....

 

[contaxable]

Maybe this is another misleaded soul.....

well, say what you like. i admit i do not understand hdr as i openly confessed. if ou could then elaborate what art really is?

 

[night86mare]

Maybe this is another misleaded soul.....

well, say what you like. i admit i do not understand hdr as i openly confessed. if ou could then elaborate what art really is?

can't really blame him, leong23.. 80% of hdrs posted and proudly tagged as hdrs tend to resemble "cartoon art".

contaxable - have you seen realkuhl's work? i'm not sure if anyone could call this cartoon art.

as for the definition of art - like love, art is not constant. philosophers have debated the definition of many abstract concepts for century. i think the best conclusion is that we form our own version of art. but likewise, just like your love may not be appreciated by another party, your "art" may not be aprpeciated another party, and i think it is silly if one refuses to acknowledge that.

anyways, post processing hdr is not as painful as it is, actually, i take about 5-10 minutes for the usual.

 

[ortega]

as with all discussion on art, there is no right and no wrong

and as with all threads, play nice

 

[contaxable]

can't really blame him, leong23.. 80% of hdrs posted and proudly tagged as hdrs tend to resemble "cartoon art".

contaxable - have you seen realkuhl's work? i'm not sure if anyone could call this cartoon art.

as for the definition of art - like love, art is not constant. philosophers have debated the definition of many abstract concepts for century. i think the best conclusion is that we form our own version of art. but likewise, just like your love may not be appreciated by another party, your "art" may not be aprpeciated another party, and i think it is silly if one refuses to acknowledge that.

anyways, post processing hdr is not as painful as it is, actually, i take about 5-10 minutes for the usual.

Thats very true indeed. The picture in the url does look like cartoon art to me, seriously. I had done (finger and brush) painting & craft works for over a decade. I am into semi abstract art as i make the subjects of interest look unreal. If there is a term, i would call what i create as cartoon-like realism art. Anything that looks unreal is to me an influence of art. Cartoon art is just an associative term I somehow link to hdr.

That is my visual world which is how i express in words. I am sure some would disagree, but there is nothing i can do but to apologise to those who cannot understand my definition of art.

 

[Leong23]

well, say what you like. i admit i do not understand hdr as i openly confessed. if ou could then elaborate what art really is?

I agreed that there are no right and wrong in art, but this thread seem to more on discussing about technical aspect.
Maybe this can explain.
high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

In layman term, when we look at a scenery with tree/building and sky, everything look ok. But if we take a photo of it, either the sky is washout or the tree/building is underexposed. The reason is the unlike our eyes, camera sensor can't record enormous range of light span.
HDRI will able to re-create what we see through our naked eyes.

 

[zero o]

I agreed that there are no right and wrong in art, but this thread seem to more on discussing about technical aspect.
Maybe this can explain.
high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

In layman term, when we look at a scenery with tree/building and sky, everything look ok. But if we take a photo of it, either the sky is washout or the tree/building is underexposed. The reason is the unlike our eyes, camera sensor can't record enormous range of light span.
HDRI will able to re-create what we see through our naked eyes.

Interesting discussion. However, something puzzles me still .. the HDRI purists are advocating that despite it being called HDRI, most of the HDRIs that we see do not fall into the category of HDRI primarily because they have been over-doctored. If I go by what Leong23 has quoted above - that HDRI is to "accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows." and "HDRI will able to re-create what we see through our naked eyes" then i can only conclude that most of the HDRIs that gets thumbs up here in CS are over-doctored (going by the HDRI definition suppled) - Quoting the famous Labrador Park scene which has been shot and posted by so many parties, what i see at Labrador during the sunset is definitely not as majestic as what the HDRI pictures look like ! Dont get me wrong - i like the HDRI shots of Labrador park very much.

So, my question is - is the HDRI definition supplied by leong23 above representative, or is it outdated or are we advocating one theoratical standard and applying another practical standard as and when it suit our needs. Or are we simply arguing over the different shades of white ? Can someone please enlighten this newbie .

..

 

[night86mare]

what i see at Labrador during the sunset is definitely not as majestic as what the HDRI pictures look like ! Dont get me wrong - i like the HDRI shots of Labrador park very much.

if you want to put it that way, then every long exposure shot will be gone case.

since when can your eyes see a blurring of water? :bsmilie:

when we talking about "what we see", is the fact that you should be able to see the details. the amount of detail you see; there is a certain way to control it. and i think maybe, some amount of visitations of labrador park is in order. i have seen far better than what is posted in labrador park, but whether i managed to capture and reproduce the scene as what i remember is subjective - i'd say that i only keep and post about 50% of all sunsets i manage to attend. i won't say that hdri will LITERALLY translate what you see with your eye into a picture, to say that it tries is more appropriate.

i think the idea is how "natural looking" the picture is.

night hdr is a very touchy subject in most hdr realists/overdone battles - there is no real way to judge what you see during the night, it is very different frmo the day. during sunset there is still enough light though.

most of the overdone hdr has the shadow areas bright, and the highlight shadows darkened, to the point where the whole picture is evenly exposed. that seems very weird to me. the SKY should be brighter still. the FOREGROUND should be darker still. if it turns out that the foreground looks the same as the sky, or the foreground is BRIGHTER (gasp) than the sky, then you really have a problem communicating what you actually saw. also turns out making the picture very "flat" and without depth. very 2d. which introduces the "cartoon paint effect".

you know, everytime i write something on somebody's thread about how the hdr is too overdone and too surreal, i get pokes about how i do infrared photography. the thing is, infrared photography is.. another ball game in some sense; also another wowed effect which is sometimes applied a tad too liberally here just because it's different.

to that, and hdr, perhaps theonlinephotographer has written about it, in one of my favourite essays (though i did comment a tad angrily on it on the site):

It is remarkable how many photographers are not content to simply take pictures.

The ways this disaffection surfaces may vary. The number of tricks and gimmicks and special effects gadgets on the market—star filters and graduated color filters and vignetters and worse—is of course one sign of it. With many photographers, it takes the form of an endless search for equipment and materials of the utmost quality. “Is this lens best?” “Is this latest film slightly more saturated in the reds?” A variant of this is the willful but unnecessary use of oddball cameras for effect. In a more sophisticated form it is reflected in the complete fabrication of set-pieces, so that the resulting photographs do nothing more than illustrate an idea in a photographer’s or an art director’s head. Amateur work may be derivative, but of course pros, too, fall all over themselves pandering to the latest trends, whether it be softboxes, or hard light, or “light painting” guns. What it all seems to indicate is that many photographers, amateur and pro, seem to be constantly searching for some technique, some effect, or some material that will set their pictures apart, and make them “special.”

Does this have something to do with character?

The camera is a mechanical intermediary between the desire to create and the reified creation. It rescues the craftsperson from the intimidating challenge of the blank canvas or the uncarved block. The camera always creates something, even with a minimum of direction by the operator. So perhaps photography attracts some people who want and expect their creativity to be automatic. And I’d propose, tentatively, that maybe these photographers’ search for “specialness” expresses their dissatisfaction that it hasn’t turned out to be that way.

Many (not all) of the best photographers—maybe just the luckiest—settle on their mature technique relatively early, and then “get past” the technique and concentrate on the visual content of the pictures. This includes artists as diverse as Weston, Winogrand, Julia Margaret Cameron, Cartier-Bresson, and Paul Caponigro, among many others. The list is a long one. Even a photographer such as Nicholas Nixon—who set out in the beginning of his career intending to deliberately change his technique at regular intervals—has, by now, naturally settled on a signature technique. The techniques in question are all different. Each one suits each individual photographer’s style of seeing, or it suits their times. But each of them found a set of techniques that were satisfactory...and then got down to the real work.

Getting past technique makes the photographer ask a crucial question: assuming the use of the same camera, the same film, and the application of the same basic technical competence—in other words, the same effects—what makes one picture better than another, or one picture better than a hundred others? The way in which a photographer answers that question will ultimately determine how successful, how significant, his or her work will be.

 

[azul123]

i lost you on the second paragraph :dunno:

Sorry, it was taken from previous thread.

Here.

To be honest, when I looked at Jopel's image I actually liked what I saw, the grass was unique and I liked it. But TS from that earlier thread seems to be picking on composition and trivialising image that was post-processed which is rather good IMHO, I can accept if he doesn't like it but as I said it is a subjective matter.

flash fired, along with intensive highlight/shadow manipulation in photoshop?

i also think it's also possible that there was a cut and pasting and layering done. it seems to be hoovering slightly off the ground even though there is a leaning on the bike, which seems a bit weird to me. the grass pattern also looks very weird..have never seen grass like that.

oh, btw, i do not refer to emotional attachment pictures.. these have a special place. i'm sure everyone has a photograph that isn't technically sound, or doesn't have a strong composition, but it just means something to you, because of whatever reason - be it the person you were with, the place you were at, the people in the photographs. everybody is certainly more than entitled to that.. though there should also be acknowledgement (when asking for critique, at least) that the photograph is less than solid.

Again, please do not think I am picking on any particular person, I really feel there is no one authority to say what is good image and what is not, to each his own...

../azul123

 

[night86mare]

Sorry, it was taken from previous thread.

Here.

To be honest, when I looked at Jopel's image I actually liked what I saw, the grass was unique and I liked it. But TS from that earlier thread seems to be picking on composition and trivialising image that was post-processed which is rather good IMHO, I can accept if he doesn't like it but as I said it is a subjective matter.

Again, please do not think I am picking on any particular person, I really feel there is no one authority to say what is good image and what is not, to each his own...

../azul123

not picking on any particular person? if jopel.. can understand what i am saying, i did not say his picture had poor composition or not technically sound. i refused to pass any comment other than technicalities precisely because it is a personal picture.

i have many of personal pictures that suck, i keep them because they mean something to me personally. i was just posting my thoughts on that, and how such pictures when posted up for sharing might actually be considered taboo to talk on (in the rare event when you actually decide to post them up). that's just one of my ideas. if you don't bother to understand what i write and read it properly and slowly; at least take some more time to do so and not waste my time having to explain myself twice for every post i make.

 

[night86mare]

in any case, when one posts up a personal picture, then he has to acknowledge that it may have more value to him than others - precisely because it's personal.

for example, someone who has a fetish for eating live frogs. he can't actually go around selling live frogs and waving them in front of people and showing them how to eat the live frogs (purely hypothetical, sorry if this turns your stomach). i'm sure people would understand better why he is doing such when he tells them it's a personal habit. but the live frog eater should also be aware that his habits are not palatable to many people, and not expect them to go wow! let's all eat live frogs now.

it is obvious that jopel's picture is of a loved one, his son - i mean if you really want me to critique it, being as brief as possible i won't say it's bad. reason being firstly because it is much more well executed than many of the hdrs i refer to; secondly the composition is actually there, although i do not like the surreality, i can appreciate that he wants to give a special background to this picture, possibly because of memory of the day spent, etc. this is precisely because commenting on such is to be avoided - you might end up writing a reason which isn't exactly the right one and indirectly offend.






i also am very taken aback by your statement that there is no authority to say what's a good picture and what's bad. in that case, all art critics should be executed, all movie critics should be lynched, and all political critics, for the most part, well, let's not think of an execution for them, shall we?

i will bring up salman rushdie again, like i always do, because it is the simplest way to explain how certain things are sacred and cannot be touched on or used in discussion as pivoting factors -

At Cambridge University I was taught a laudable method of argument: you never personalise, but you have absolutely no respect for people’s opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks. That seems to me a crucial distinction: people must be protected from discrimination by virtue of their race, but you cannot ring-fence their ideas. The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

 

[azul123]

i did not say his picture had poor composition or not technically sound.

No, you didn't actually say that, what you said was

it seems to be hoovering slightly off the ground even though there is a leaning on the bike, which seems a bit weird to me. the grass pattern also looks very weird..have never seen grass like that.

Care to explain what then actually are you saying or meant? for me, how the grass appeared in the image and the tyres etc.. etc.. was really nice, but you said it appeared wierd... weird nice or weird not nice?

Let's take out the boy from the image to "unpersonalise" it, the whole scene I think was nicely HDR PP.

../azul123

 

[night86mare]

No, you didn't actually say that, what you said was

Care to explain what then actually are you saying or meant? for me, how the grass appeared in the image and the tyres etc.. etc.. was really nice, but you said it appeared wierd... weird nice or weird not nice?

Let's take out the boy from the image to "unpersonalise" it, the whole scene I think was nicely HDR PP.

../azul123

firstly - i was questioning if he had cut and pasted the boy in. it doesn't seem like the boy was shot together and processed accordingly. was just commenting about that out of personal interest. anything wrong with that?

in short - the scene in the photo is nicely controlled in that the lighting is done nicely, there is no haloing, the colors are within reasonable limits. but it looks more like a backdrop than an outdoor scene.

as for the grass - it looks like a lot of cloning to me. if you cannot see that, then we have no need to discuss this further since there is limited photographic understanding.

and if you have seen grass like that, and trees like that, good luck to you wherever you have seen them. this is no place on planet earth, where the trees grow like seaweed and the grass grow like well, seamoss. if i cannot state out the fact that that aspect of the picture is undoubtedly and undeniably artificial, then what am i allowed to state by YOUR standards?

by the way, if you aren't going to provide any points other than "oh i think it's fine" - which as mentioned time and time again, is NOT a valid reason, i will request via report post to close this thread - if you examine what you ahve posted so far it is no different from the other guy - it's just happy picking on my statements and mine alone. it is a waste of your time and mine, since nothing new is brought to the table on either side if i have to explain every statement again and again and my intentions.

since when have MY INTENTIONS become part of a HDR discussion? :dunno: