ENTRY #1: The HDR Process in digital photography

A sight for sore eyes, literally. Bad HDR!

With the technological advancements in DSLR photography, new techniques and processes have emerged as trends in recent years. One of these trends is a process known as “HDR” photography I first heard about this concept when reading Photography magazines at the Photo Service camera store 2 years ago in the old port. It stands for “High Density Range” and requires shooting in RAW format.


 This type of digital format produces an image that is as minimally processed as possible. In other words, it can be said that it is the raw “negative” in film photography. Several versions of the same scene are photographed using different camera settings to produce a wide spectrum of possible lighting, contrast and colors. The photos are then processed individually in Photoshop to accentuate their properties (i.e. color saturation, contrast) and merged all together to form a surreal-looking image. 


At first glance it may seem impressive to someone who has never seen one before: ultra-high detailing, unbelievable textures and the inability to tell if it is real or CGI. However, I find it to be ultra-tacky, unbelievably cartoonish and it gives off the impression that the creator has an inability to understand the difference between photography and painting by numbers! It takes away from reality in an unforgiving, automatic way and creates an unfamiliar scene that is uncomfortable to look at. It is one thing to familiarize a viewer with a piece of artwork that plays with the senses (such as the fur tea cup) and to disconnect them from what they are used to, but it is entirely opposite to put them in a visual limbo of redundant imagery that does not stimulate the senses. 

Example of good, subtle use of HDR

There is simply too much of an exaggeration of reality that tries to employ a sense of hyper-realism and is too difficult to absorb in a satisfying way. I am not saying that I dislike all HDR entirely, though. It seems that 90% of it is corny, but there are examples of subtle ones that truly accentuate the beauty of a scene. These end up being great photos for car advertisements in the back of magazines where the car is in the desert or by a crystal clear lake at sunset.