Post Your Best HDR Photo

[Oren]

Also amazing... great HDRs!

[anglefire]

Michael, the interior shots are super. Look to be very subtle HDR.


I also love the Utah/Arizona ones too - makes me almost want to come over to America!

[aZhu]

This isn't my best HDR but it's the most recent one. [H]


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[Michael James]

Thanks []


I'm still fighting to get it more realistic and less "stylized" as they tend to look. Interiors are a bitch. Tungsten inside and daylight outside with color spill through the windows. It is toughest dealing with 5000-6000 temps flowing into interior spaces with 2800-3600 temps. Those color spills are rough!


And of course the DR is insane between the interiors and glaring sun coming off the ocean.


The realtors, builders, and such love it though. Especially the builders.

[Oren]

I'm still fighting to get it more realistic and less "stylized" as they tend to look.
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Don't, that's why they are so amazing and different - IMO at least.

[Michael James]

I know it may look amazing and cool to us... but my clients hate it. They want realism. The worst case scenario has already happened. They show a property that someone from out of town viewed online and then they got there and it didn't look as surreal and cool to them in person. I lost business with certain realtors because I was having a hard time making them more photo real. Tonemapping does some weird things to colors, etc.. and it is a work in progress to get to where I am now. My clients demand realism.


I've gained back lost clients (realtors) because I'm getting more photoreal now. All that I posted is older work of mine. The stuff I've done recently captures the full DR, but looks far more real and less "stylized".

[Colin]

You know, aside from this whole thread having some really, really cool images, I was thinking.


I'm assuming that HDR means 'High Dynamic Range'. Please tell me if it's otherwise.


Multiple exposures makes sense if the camera can't capture the dynamic range of the image. If you look at the histogram of a single shot, and it's clipping the top or bottom, or you want to push the noise floor down, multiple exposures makes sense. However, what the defining parameter is, is the dynamic range.


Correct me gently, if I'm wrong, but as I understand it,


'8 bit' images 256 possible levels for each channel. With A/D and D/A converters, each bit doubles the dynamic range, or in photography terms, increases the dynamic range from lowest to highest by one stop. So, a 12 bit A/D converter is already going two stops up, and two stops down. But that's kind of beside the point.


If the image itself actually has content which exercises extreme dynamic range (night time with lights, direct sunlight and heavily shaded areas, etc.), then regardless of what you're able to capture, there is one relevant issue. The display medium, be it a monitor, or the print medium, doesn't have nearly the contrast ratio to actually make use of that image if it's 'accurate' by any objective measure. It then becomes a matter of a technical art, to take that HDR original content, and massage it into an image that looks, in the intended output medium, as we'd like to represent the experience. If you mess with the curves, they can look surreal and very cool, or plain ridiculous, or, if you are very careful, still 'realistic' even if you're sacrificing the accuracy of the linearity to maintain the detail of the experience.


The experience itself can open up a whole other can of nightcrawlers. The fact that the eye, and the way that we see, isn't really like a camera, but rather weird scanner that uses a camera, outside of the whole color space issue, makes the job of the camera, and the presentation of an image, technically kind of ridiculous. Luckily, our brains are really good at filling in.


But, as for the important stuff, I'm really glad that Bryan opened this up. I've seen some truly inspiring images. I hope to see more!

[Jeff]

varok - beautiful images. That first one is done really nicely.





And Brian - haha thanks for putting me on the spot on your News page LOL. [H] This type of thread has taken off on another forum I am part of. Over 1,000 replies and the last I looked, some 130,000 views.

[Jeff]

Michael - your architectural work is gorgeous too! It's awesome to be able to see what's outside. The beach front home on the last page is really nice. The wood work in that home is stunning.

[Michael James]

Thanks Jeff


And yes.. that beach home is gorgeous. Working in locations like that is a treat. Then I have to go back to my little townhome (reality check) LOL! But it is nice to be able to frequent such beautiful homes for a living. I just try to create images that capture their beauty.