All photos are lies, but all photos are the truth (at least to that photographer at that time)!
I have a sincere question about ethics and HDR photographs.
-
- Thread starter ramyjackson
- Start date
Recent Classifieds
-
Want to Buy Mamiya M645 WLFer
- Started by wjlapier
-
For Sale Photography books
- Started by Peter Schrager
-
For Sale 11x14 photo paper
- Started by Peter Schrager
-
Sold SOLD!
- Started by B.S.Kumar
-
Sold SOLD!
- Started by B.S.Kumar
Forum statistics
It is a little like saying B&W photos are "hideous" because it suck all of the color out!
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
- Messages
- 29,832
- Format
- Hybrid
hi sg
does that mean photographers who flash their paper or film before ( or after ) exposure
should just learn to deal with the film or paper's limited range ? or people who do selenium intensification
or oodles of other things to make their negatives better ... what about MG filtration
i mean how about if all photographers ( black and white i guess ) just used grade 3 paper and nothing else
( or was it grade 2 ? ) no filters and no funky developers to enhance or deplete contrast if their negatives weren't
"dialed in" to that specific paper ..
while i know where you are coming from ... just the same,
often times the gripes people put forth about HDR or digital photography
(as a film photographer myself)
generally seem to be sort of disingenuous seeing the same or similar things people who do chemical photography
to make better images, aren't allowed with digital users. ... just because.
yeah i know there;s a lot of ©r@P out there but there's always been a lot of that out there..
Perfect.
All of the things you listed probably would be unethical to a strict follower of "f:64", but not to a much maligned pictorial photographer. All would be acceptable and used in pictorial photography if that helped get across the feeling the photographer had when he/she took the picture. In my book, good pictures have emotional content in addition to technical expertise.........Regards!
Do not add in things that I never stated. I did not talk about those things, none of which have to do with multiple exposures. Nor did I discuss chemical [READ: REAL] photography. HDR takes multiple exposures, during which time the scene can change or overtly modified. Digital photography today does not have the exposure range to take some low light situations with enough data for the image and therefore uses the crutch of multiple images and mashing things around with software.
By the way, I never heard of HDR before reading this post. Photography shorthand would be great if everyone could read it and not everyone can. Old timers like me and beginners alike.......Regards!
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2009
- Messages
- 6,297
- Format
- Multi Format
Don't be too harsh on photographers that use HDR. I'm one of the old dog photographers that didn't have the luxury HDR. Back in the film days shooting in the studio, photographers use to gobo hot spots and fill dark shadows. It was especially tough on interior photographers that had to balance out different brightnesses in an interior scene. They used to shoot a lot of Polaroids to figure out where to fill the shadows and where to gobo off bright areas. How about landscape photographers using graduated filters to hold back the brightness of the sky? HDR makes contrast control easier. If it's HDR is done too far, it doesn't look natural.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
- Messages
- 29,832
- Format
- Hybrid
i never said you said the other things, I said those other things ..
yes, i equate HDR with exactly what i said ...
to me its the exact same thing and i am asking you
if digital uses all sorts of stuff / HDR to compensate for exposure issues ...
why is it OK for chemical / film/paper photographers to use
those other things do to make up for the same issues ...
flashing film/paper, developers, chemical negative enhancers, multi grade and graded papers, combination printing &c
its all the same exact thing but instead of people doing it themselves, a computer does it for them
couldn't agree more !
its basically the same argument .. what is acceptable because of authenticity and what is over the top fakery.
Last edited:
The 'HRD Problem' isn't new to digital photograph. Kodak had always prided themselves on accurate color reproduction in their color films. Then, in the '70s,, Fuji came out with a series of color films with 'enhanced' color saturation and people loved them. They wanted the colors they remembered - not the colors that were really there - green grass and not browned out grass - blue skies and not hazy skies . Kodak had to adapt to give people the colors they remembered. HDR gives people the colors they want.
That would be true if you HDR processed in monochrome,. High dynamic range photography is multiple exposure processing to eliminate different areas of contrast or luminance. It's one of a number of tools, like sharpness and saturation, whose use some people have no discrimination over.
Factors like shadow or sky detail are not ends in themselves. If introducing such information detracts from the drama of the photograph, increased dynamic range has a negative influence. Creative photography is not surveillance where shadow data might reveal an offenders face and car plate. Nor is it medical photography where artificially enhancing exposure shows a rogue cell. It's just creating a mood to provoke a visceral response to an image. Adding visual information may provide balance to the picture (in which case I probably haven't noticed it), but it more commonly de-emphasises the subject by cluttering the frame with extraneous data.
Meh. It's everywhere now. I do not really notice it when my phone actually shoots in HDR all the time -- at least my Fuji X-30 is polite enough to ask if I want HDR! What is more noticeable and irritating is the hyper-HDR and hyper-saturated rendition of scenes that somehow are more appealing to a population accustomed to viewing the same thing on their home televisions. Scenes I remember personally have frequently appeared corrupted and mired in a gaudy hotchpotch of bizarre colours that are far, far removed from reality.
I might one day figure out how to turn HDR on the phone off, but until then, it's not causing any grief and nobody has complained!
I might one day figure out how to turn HDR on the phone off, but until then, it's not causing any grief and nobody has complained!
Look at how O Winston Link solved the problem of light and depth of field with his steam locomotive photographs.
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/when-steam-locomotion-ground-to-a-halt/
http://roanokehistory.org/links-train-photos-document-rural-culture/
http://www.virginialiving.com/the-daily-post/full-steam-ahead/
https://www.americanheritage.com/content/o-winston-link-museum
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2009
- Messages
- 6,297
- Format
- Multi Format
He's brilliant! He did a lot of work to get those shots. But here's an interesting tidbit. He was held captive in his darkroom.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/movies/26love.html
My theory is HDR was a reaction to the limited dynamic range of older digital sensors, and it became part of the visual repertoire even though it was no longer needed. This may be an exposure issue, a sense that the general public require shadow detail even if the highlights blow out. This is easily eliminated by underexposing anywhere between a half and two and a half stops, and letting the shadows do their own thing. That requires manual exposure, or at least a thumb on the exposure compensation dial.
We see with our brains not our eyes.
The picture of the outside world that we perceive in our minds is assembled from information sent by the eye via the optic nerve. The actual dynamic range of the eye is very limited so the signal with shadow detail has nothing in the highlights. The signal with highlights has empty shadows. But the brain seamlessly assembles the information and offers it to our perception as a biological equivalent of HDR.
The eye continually flickers about, a process called saccades, and sends multiple different glimpses of the world to the brain which dutifully stitches all the alternative pictures together to produces our perception of our surroundings.
Our view of the world is actually stitched HDR. It is no wonder that when these techniques are replicated in digital picture fabrication the results can look familiar and attractive. It is also true that no one, by effort of will, can turn off the constant stitching and HDR-ing that underlies our vision.
I'd suggest, with some irony, that the only way to see what the world looks like without mental stitching and HDR is to take a straight photograph of it. A photograph meaning, in this case, the visible impression of an optical image in a light sensitive surface.
As to the ethical question about which view is true, how we see versus how film sees, the answer is that both are true within their understood limits. And we can choose which one to embrace. But they are not the same thing.
The picture of the outside world that we perceive in our minds is assembled from information sent by the eye via the optic nerve. The actual dynamic range of the eye is very limited so the signal with shadow detail has nothing in the highlights. The signal with highlights has empty shadows. But the brain seamlessly assembles the information and offers it to our perception as a biological equivalent of HDR.
The eye continually flickers about, a process called saccades, and sends multiple different glimpses of the world to the brain which dutifully stitches all the alternative pictures together to produces our perception of our surroundings.
Our view of the world is actually stitched HDR. It is no wonder that when these techniques are replicated in digital picture fabrication the results can look familiar and attractive. It is also true that no one, by effort of will, can turn off the constant stitching and HDR-ing that underlies our vision.
I'd suggest, with some irony, that the only way to see what the world looks like without mental stitching and HDR is to take a straight photograph of it. A photograph meaning, in this case, the visible impression of an optical image in a light sensitive surface.
As to the ethical question about which view is true, how we see versus how film sees, the answer is that both are true within their understood limits. And we can choose which one to embrace. But they are not the same thing.
I personally think adding elements (a moon, clouds, etc.) might be more of an issue (maybe not quite an ethical issue) than HDR. I notice some photographers always seem to come across scenes with super dramatic skies, and I often wonder. From another perspective it also detracts when a photographer does capture a super dramatic sky, because you might,wonder...
This does make sense. The eye/mind does not have issues with shadows and highlights like film or digital sensors do.
I agree. I have a much bigger issue with that than I do with HDR.
In one sense digital photography has killed the innocence with which people approach an image. The truth of a picture has been under attack since the earliest double exposures and mattes, but the effort to deceive was more than most people were prepared to invest, and we satisfied ourselves with a little burning in or holding back.
Now some genres of photography are on life support as a reflection of reality. I assume landscapes are examples of graphic design rather than visual documents, a sky from Africa, a moon from the photo library, a cut and stitch of disparate features woven together with clever algorithms to create a Neverland no one seriously buys in to. Part of the return to film is a quest for authenticity and away from ISO invariance, HDR, pre-sharpening and a world mediated by slider controls and Photoshop.
I just like to say how what a wonderful job you did on the first picture, wish I could edit even close to that. Im sure the others are good as well, but the b&w stands out.
I have the impression that most film shooters scan rather than print their images from the negative. So they have every opportunity to monkey around with them in scanning software and Photoshop.
Where do you come to the conclusion that the majority of film shooters at Photrio scan rather than chemical print? Did you find that secret mysterious non-existent survey? Many film shooters here still use a darkroom and not Fauxto$hopping. What percentage? I do not know but I am not going to make some wild assumptions.
Like I said, it is an impression. It may be wrong, but I don't see many questions in this forum about how to make color prints. How else do these young film shooters get their images up on Instagram?
| Photrio.com contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. To read our full affiliate disclosure statement please click Here. |
PHOTRIO PARTNERS EQUALLY FUNDING OUR COMMUNITY:  |