The photography thread

#harleydavidson #streetglide #justboythings



americasmall.png
 
It CAN be used to enhance a photo, particularly a scene where it would be impossible to correctly expose both the highlights and shadows. Often it's not necessary. I use tone mapping once in a while, it can be great when used subtly

My complaint is when there's such obvious fringing. Does your photo of you running a marathon really need a halo around every edge? Did you really backlight every surface?

At the very least, tone it down a notch.
 
Those are some beautiful landscapes, I really like the the 2nd and 3rd photos. I would definitely want to see them around sunrise/sunset though.
 
I've been to finland on a holiday, and i've always really liked the country. I remember trying to read/understand a finnish article, and i had to look up the word "arvoitus" because i didn't understand it and thought it sounded cool. I used it once when registering for a forum, and since then it sticked. It was my default "game nickname" many years ago.

And here are some more Urbex/HDR shots! I'm kinda digging this style of editing, really like the colors.











 
Personally, looking at this type of HDR images for me is like trying to read a wall of text in rainbow colors. Too much detail and too little comprehensible meaning and structure.
I think upon seeing HDR most people have been impressed by how visually stimulating it can be, but the novelty quickly fades away and they start wondering "what am I even looking at here and why?".
However, recovering some deep shadows and strong highlights that would otherwise be clipped is of course a great potential result from HDR.

Anyway back to posting photos:
Here are a couple sunrise shots from my trip to the seaside
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Only posting this because it came out surprisingly usable all things considered, it doesn't come close to some of the stuff on here. Facebook banner we did on a Samsung Galaxy 4:

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Actually I'd be super receptive to feedback on this if anyone has any thoughts.
 
@jipchen
wow, very nice and breathtaking shots of my "neighborhood"
here is my version of the obersee shot ;)
Koenigssee_20.jpg


lg aus Salzburg nach München
Chris
 
Personally, looking at this type of HDR images for me is like trying to read a wall of text in rainbow colors. Too much detail and too little comprehensible meaning and structure.
Really valid point, though i love the edits (and lots of other people do) ... i'm kind of wondering if they really fit the place where i took them. I really like how i can make a surreal picture of it, but i agree that the details are a bit overwhelming.

But what do you mean with "too little comprehensible meaning and structure"?
 
Overcooked, so the actual dynamic range in the image is out of whack. There is no comprehensible shadow / light ratio, everything is visible, where your brain wants to see contrast between light and dark. Looks very much like photomatix has been used.

The 3rd image has the best ratio between dark and light, but overall there is a halo effect over each image, this kind of processing looks cool till you've seen it a few times, then it eventually makes your eyes hurt.

There's a few better options for blending exposures than photomatix, if you're using photoshop, you can go to file > automate > merge to HDR pro, and create a 32 bit image which you can then tone in ACR, gives you a whole pile of extra range on your exposure and shadow/highlight adjustments, etc, can often be more natural looking. More powerful still is luminosity masking, check out this tutorial here : http://iso.500px.com/luminosity-masks-in-digital-blending/ and grab his action set if you don't want to go through the laborious chore of setting up luminosity mask actions yourself.

I have a friend who is a landscape/cityscape photographer and he manually pastes all his HDR layers into a single file, then uses regular masks to paint in areas from the different exposures between layers, which also looks pretty natural but is far too time intensive for my liking!

The composition of the images is really good, just the toning that is over the top. The added boost to local contrast in photomatix that brings out grungy detail and such can fool you into thinking you have enough shadow and such after you've been looking at the images for a while.