I once hated maths. I was so bad at it that I had to see a tutor outside of my school time. But time passed and I improved, having been given the lucky privilege of an extra school year while transiting from a country to another. College came and I juggled happily with the basics of trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, and other wonderful buggers. And then I forgot it all. Such is the usefulness of our school years. (Don’t get me started on that...)

However, maths is all around us and once in a while, as adults, we run into it and suddenly remember an old friend. It’s happened to me quite a few times recently and I’ve decided to write about it because, not so surprisingly, it was photography that yielded the happy encounter. As both a technical and artistic field, photography is a good breeding ground for numbers and rules.

The number 3 has always begged for rules. Maths has its Rule of Three. That much I have remembered and I use it all the time in high stress situations. « If one black cat eats 76.4 pellets in 55 seconds, how long would it take him to eat the standard 50 pellet ration? » Scuba divers too have a Rule of Thirds. One third of your air supply to go, one third to come back, one third as a reserve. Granted, that’s a worse-case scenario, for penetrations and deep dives.

So sure enough, photographers and artists came up with their own Rule of Thirds. It’s the mother of all composition rules. To be broken with moderation but enthusiasm. After all, as the crew of the Black Pearl would say of the « Code of Parlez », it’s a more of a guideline... Still. The Rule of Thirds... rules. If one divides a typical canvas or photographic composition in 9 rectangles formed by the intersection of two pairs of equally spaced vertical and horizontal lines, four focal points are obtained at the intersections, dividing the scene in three equal vertical segments and three horizontal ones.

The Rule of Thirds claims that a well balanced composition will place its main subject on one of the four focal points. In addition to making the image aesthetically pleasing, this method creates a virtual dynamic path by making our eyes travel from the opposite edge to the subject, and back. The Rule of Thirds is at the Composition 101 level. To the point that I think every digital camera should have an option to superimpose the lines on its LCD screen.

Then there is the much thicker Golden Ratio topic, referred to by the Greek letter phi (φ). Two numbers are said to be in the Golden Ratio if the sum of the two is to the larger what the larger is to the smaller. Got it? Come up, you gotta keep up, here!

(a + b) / a = a / b = φ = 1.618...

Ok, it’s harder to visualize and it involves maths more directly. But it’s an appealing ratio that suppresses one of the lines in the Rule of Thirds and brings the focal point of a photo slightly closer to the center, working well for scenes that lack an abandance of secondary subjects and/or depth of field. And more interestingly, it’s also closely associated with the Fibonacci Sequence. Ah-ah, now I can almost hear the crowd going « Oh » and « Ah » and « Of course, Fibonacci! ». Indeed. Hollywood has a curious manner of pulling obscure themes out of a geeky hat and throwing them out into the spotlight and popular knowledge overnight; so just as Lara Croft brought Leo Délibes’ Lakmé to the masses while dancing on a high wire, Robert Langdon introduced the world to the Fibonacci Sequence and hence, I just awoke you by finally mentioning a concept you’d heard before.

I very much doubt, however, that walking out of the theater you rushed to the public library to open an encyclopedia. So Fibonacci probably ended up in your mind alongside many Italian pasta names. Let me clarify, then. The Fibonacci Sequence isn’t a complicated notion - it’s the implications that are endless. The sequence in itself is a series of numbers, beginning with an arbitrary 0 and 1, and each following number being the sum of both previous numbers in the list. It goes like this, to infinity: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89, etc. That’s it.

Now let’s turn this into an image. Imagine that we draw an invisible square (it’s the 0, duh.) Then a visible one, one unit in side length. We draw another, same size, adjacent. Then we draw another with a side length equal to the 2 previous added, and we keep going, like this:

Above, the Fibonacci Sequence is represented graphically. So how are the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Sequence related? They both yield an approximately identical spiral. If we were to draw an arc in each square, corner to corner, starting with the second 1, we’d get a spiral such as this one:

This is called a Fibonacci Spiral and it is virtually identical to a Golden Spiral (obtained by a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor b is related to φ, the golden ratio - Wikipedia dixit, blah-blah-blah.) This is also where things become interesting from an artistic point of view. Let’s superimpose the Rule of Thirds and the Fibonacci Spiral. First of all, one of the focal points of the Rule of Thirds coincides almost exactly with the origin of the spiral:

Then we notice that the curve of our spiral manages to lead the eye through each of the Rule of Thirds’ 9 rectangles except the central one, which once again, doesn’t need the extra attention. There is a smooth transition from the outside edge, a quick exploration of the image and a final tightening of the focus into the main subject. Perfect. And the path can be followed back out, too.

Now the trick is to actually build a photographic composition according to these rules. It so happens that the shot below works pretty well, but it was a pure coincidence. Entering the scene from top right corner, the eye travels down taking in the tree and pond, finds the goose, leaves it attracted by the boots, starts inspecting the girl and finally centers onto her adorably focused expression.

Or at least, that’s my take on it. One is allowed to theorize, right?

For Marie, who constantly reminds me how beautiful flowers can be.

This morning at 5:25 AM, I got up and prepared for a trip. I wasn’t going far and yet, I would explore a new universe. The objective was Stanley Park, my spaceship was a camera and for propulsion, I’d be tapping into macro theory. 

It was my first outing ever with Abetoo as a macro photography tool. We were both quite excited. Abetoo is my Canon 450D, in case you’re wondering if I’ve lost it. Granted, my current macro line of accessories consists of a single little black metal ring worth $10; it’s nothing to write home about but I will be expanding it over time. Bellows are on the way, and as soon as I can get my hand on a 58-39mm step down ring (anybody out there?), I’ll start using the Rodagon lens too.

Today, I was simply going to duplicate the previous setup and reverse-mount my Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS 1:3-5.6. I’d be using the silly little ring for that, and although I had no illusion on the initial quality of the images I’d capture, this was meant to be a field trip and first test. I needed to get a sense of how to juggle camera settings, deal with the extremely limited depth of field, compensate for the loss of auto-focus and aperture control, adapt Live View to my needs, gauge the possible combination of ISO and speeds, etc.

When I reached Beaver Lake, after a nice stroll and a cute encounter with a young raccoon that came to me and stood up on his back legs, opening his arms as if to preach or beg for a hug, it was still dark. I turned my small LED flash light on and began searching for sleepy dragonflies. I found none. There was dew everywhere all right, but no bugs. This is late September and maybe the morning air still isn’t cold enough to keep insects numb long enough for me to arrive and shoot. I’ll have to investigate further.

But the dew was enough for me to begin my experiment. I setup the tripod as low as it would go and launched into an amazing new world. It was 6:30 AM. I was at it for the next 5 hours. There is no way to properly imagine the « infinitely small » before actually seeing it magnified on the LCD screen. For this alone, Canon’s new Live View function is priceless! Without it, I would have had to crouch down to the ground and attempt to peer through the viewfinder in very awkward positions.

I soon got a hang of it. Focus, for the time being, is achieved by slightly moving the whole camera/tripod assembly back and forth, or tilting the head, mere millimeters at a time. Very difficult but doable. My lens does not have an aperture setting ring - it’s all electronics as with most modern lenses - so if I just remove the lens and reverse it, it remains wide open as it usually is while metering. But I’ve found a neat trick on the internet that works like a charm: I set the aperture on-camera with the lens in its proper position, then before removing it I press and hold the Depth of Field Visualization button. Voila. The diaphragm stays at the preset value. This is invaluable because it allows me to step down my f-stops and gain a little more depth of field.

In the end, the most challenging part of macro photography doesn’t seem to be as technical as it is visual. The problem for me is slowing down enough. I am used to composing my shots while walking around. But in the macro realm of nature, walking around equals to being blind, just as a UFO overflying the Earth would see nothing of our ridiculously selfish yet so passionate lives.

So this morning I would stop somewhere and drop to the ground, and stare for a while, letting my eyes glide over the plants and looking for details and dew drops and interesting light. I got it wrong most of the time, but once setup, the camera would invariably reveal attractive angles and cool textures I had completely missed. Many, many times, while looking at my screen, I felt like I was underwater looking at a coral reef. Other times, I was in space watching strange worlds with liquid planets orbiting yellow suns on a background of green and red nebulae.

The photos are pretty bad. I’m not even close to having mastered depth of field and focus. The slightest breeze sends flowers flying across the highly magnified frame and unless I step down to f-22 and use my highest ISO setting, tripod shots are tricky and hand-held’s are just about impossible. A lot of these are poorly framed and the in-focus range is incredibly narrow. But it’s a fascinating start and need I say I am completely hooked?

Any way, there were just too many shots that I liked so rather than posting them all here and linking to them via the usual slideshow, I’ve created a completely new gallery on the main web site, as part of an ongoing redesign which should be completed within a few months.

A word of warning: this is a Flash gallery. If you are among the 1% of web users who don’t have the Flash plugin installed, you will be given the option to do so. It’s your call. I think it’s worth it. Recent Flash versions feature the awesome Full Screen option, which I will integrate to the new site design. For now, make sure to check it out, there’s a full screen button on the lower-right corner of the gallery once it is open. It’s totally immersive! Enjoy!

Well kids, we’ll start today’s class with a trivia: can anyone tell me what this photo is? The Frenchies among you are at an advantage, but you won’t know that until later... Can’t guess? Just read on then...

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon some pretty amazing macro photography and my curiosity was triggered. I began reading more on the subject, trying to assess whether or not decent macro could be achieved with a minimal budget. I was not about to launch into yet another expensive hobby and wisely decided to stay away from Canon’s $900 MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5X Macro Lens. Some day, maybe.

Further reading revealed that many people successfully used modest setups involving belows and enlarger lenses. I found a Rodenstock Rodagon lens on eBay for a laugh and ordered it. It has arrived but I can’t start my trials until I get my hands on bellows and an adapter ring.

But then I read some more and I got into the really cool stuff. Reversing a lens, it seemed, allowed for very interesting macro results, keeping quality decent and cost down. I knew I had found my experiment’s first step.

I ordered two rings, on eBay once again, for a total of $18.78 shipping included. The two small metal adapters, once arrived from India, didn’t look like much. One was going to allow me to mount a lens reversed on my camera body, the other would let me mount one lens reversed in front of a normally mounted lens.

I did my first series of tests last night, late, with a throbbing headache from my lingering cold. The conditions were bad, my patience low and my bed was calling. But I needed to know. These are everything but good shots. But the initial results are quite amazing. Here is a non-macro shot of my Opinel knife, king of French-made outdoor tools. Do you see where I’m going with this? Yes. That’s what the first shot was. A macro of the first two letters of the word Opinel engraved in the blade, taken with my very ordinary kit lens, a EF-S 18-55mm set to its widest focal length! I only cropped the out-of-focus top and bottom a bit, but that’s basically full frame.

Of course, the first noticeable glitch is the incredibly narrow depth of field, to be expected. By mounting my lens in a reversed postion, I lost all electronics and hence control of my aperture (and depth of field). Mounting the 2 lenses one on another should help with this. Then focus isn’t really that sharp, because at this kind of magnification, the slightest vibration will make the image move. I was not using mirror lock and my remote cable was coiled very close to the camera, inducing slight trembling. In addition, with this kind of macro, focus is no longer set by using the lens’ ring but by varying the distance to the subject, which becomes incredibly difficult with a tripod-mounted camera...

But wow. This is quite amazing an improvement for a lens which normally has a 25 cm minimum focusing distance! And it cost less than $10! My kind of stuff! Next, I’ll be playing with the double lens setup and I will look into getting some kind of rail system to allow for easier focusing.

Oh and by the way: look at the first photo carefully, there’s a splendid optical illusion. Because of the sideways lighting I was using, the letters appear to be sticking out. They are in fact engraved, or recessed. I swear.

This will be a surprise slide show, unless you are already familiar with 66 Square Feet. My post is merely meant as an echo, because I like to pile up beauty in here until it finally tints my soul. Let’s just say that these amazing close-ups were taken by a magnificent photographer, with a superb little camera and a killer instinct. What else? Oh yeah, on a gorgeous terrace and in the probable company of a very, very noble black cat. The link is below. Treat yourself.

 I link therefore I am

It’s been quite a while and they were getting dusty, but the best 90 South Africa pictures have made it into their own photo galleries. Nostalgic, eerie, beautiful, they will remain what they instantly became as the shutter was pressed: icons, timestamps, history been written and frozen in time. The two galleries are available from the main Photography menu above but to be sure you’ll visit, I’ll even include the links here:

South Africa Part 1 - South Africa Part 2

Don’t look for a particular sequence or logic, there is none but that of colors and moods. Of course most of these pictures have appeared in previous posts here on the blog in the On the Road Category, scattered between January 18th and April 18th. So while turmoil is once again gripping South Africa, here are glimpses of natural peace and harmony. Images of an extraordinary trip, in extraordinary company, for an extraordinary purpose.

Timothy Farrar has finally released the newest version of his fantastic digital darkroom tool, FFDD6. Of course I’m way too busy these days to afford the time necessary to process HDR photos, but it’s exciting news and I can’t wait to test run the script on the upcoming South Africa shots!

Timothy and Kathryn are also planning to host an online FFDD HDR photo contest which promises to be totally cool, since I’ve so far only seen pictures rendered by the masters themselves and I will be quite curious to see what others are doing with the script...

So in the meantime visit their web site but also stay tuned for more HDR photography, made in South Africa, coming to a Coriolistic blog near you this spring.

Here are the few HDR pictures I chose out of the 105 I took that night. Common theme, different light, as the sun went down through the clouds and disappeared behind the mountains. They were shot from Second Beach, on the western side of Stanley Park, facing English Bay and with Point Grey and Bowen Island in the background.

By popular request, and also to a lesser extent because I’ll enjoy doing it and might even benefit from it myself, I’ve finally decided to write my own modest HDR tutorial. In order to do so, I must make an assumption and two statements. First, I suppose that my esteemed readers will have found my previous HDR-related posts, particularly Still playing with exposure blending and HDR, HDR photography meets quantum physics and Discussing HDR photography. Next, I solemnly declare being a newbie at HDR and warn said readers that my rambling should be taken with a grain of salt, if not of 400 ISO. I strongly urge anybody interested in HDR to check out the links I’ll provide throughout the post because they are quite comprehensive and in many cases much more thorough than I could ever be. I must also emphasize that this cannot really be a tutorial because most readers will not yet have available the scripts I’m referring to, and could not compare or practice. So I’ll call this a comment on my workflow rather than a tutorial.

My first contact with HDR was an accident, or rather a coincidence. I was scrolling through albums on Flickr and came upon a category of rather stunning - while a little surreal - photographs. I researched the subject and immediately knew I was going to like it. It was called High Dynamic Range. It opened new doors and unleashed a photographer’s creativity in ways that very much appealed to the landscape maniac I am.

Further research soon revealed that HDR was in its infancy, and that much debate surrounded it. I began looking for tutorials and actual tools. Three main streams emerged from the many pages I read: it seemed HDR pictures were most often generated via either a piece of software called Photomatix, through Photoshop’s integrated merge tool, or via other less known scripts or programs.

I started by playing with Photomatix (HDR blend above) for some time but while it created fascinating images, the necessary tone mapping made them a little abstract and painting-like. The program is very good at rendering complex textures and does wonders for interior scenes in artificial lighting but I find it too extreme for normal landscape photography. There’s an excellent tutorial and interesting images at Stuck in Customs.

So I went on to try Photoshop’s « Merge to HDR » tool (left); it was all right but the results still didn’t impress me that much.

Then one day, I found Timothy Farrar’s brilliant set of Photoshop scripts and actions, Farrar Focus Digital Darkroom 5. I dropped everything else I was doing and immersed myself in HDR, learning the art, refining my workflow and experimenting with the new camera I ordered along with the script. ;- ) That was a year ago.

I’m still passionately shooting most of my landscape pictures in HDR and every day I learn a new trick or technique. So my so-called tutorial will concentrate more on workflow and personal preferences then on HDR itself as a technique. Because of the radically different nature of tools like Photomatix, Photoshop and the scripts I use, some of the steps I describe might not apply to someone using a different tool. Bear with me however, and do yourself a favor: if you are considering HDR seriously and are not completely satisfied with what you’ve found so far, you owe it to yourself to have a look at Timothy’s scripts. As far as I am concerned, they simply rock.

I use a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (400D) DSLR and my only lens for the time being is the cheap 18-55mm that came with the body. A sturdy tripod is a must and I carry it everywhere with me. I also use a cable remote in order to avoid camera shake, as well as mirror lock once in a while. The camera is always set to manual mode to give me full control on depth of field, and I obviously shoot RAW pictures with the camera set to the Adobe RGB color space (closer to the giant ProPhoto I use in Photoshop.)

As long as I am doing landscapes, I systematically bracket all my exposures, taking a series of 3 shots for each scene: underexposed by 2 f-stops, correct metered exposure and overexposed by 2-stops. I make sure to vary speed rather than exposure in order to keep depth of field constant. When initially metering the scene and deciding on where to start the bracket, I do my best to « expose (to the) right », choosing to offset the 3 exposures slightly towards the right of the histogram to maximize signal-to-noise ratio. More than 3 exposures would be beneficial for the technique I use but I haven’t gotten that far yet and I will need an even better tripod because the extra manipulation required will increase the risk of moving the camera between shots. Timothy Farrar wrote a great page on the selection of adequate bracketed exposures for HDR blending. Below are the 3 RAW exposures captured for this page’s example:

Once back at the base, the magic begins. The current version of Timothy’s scripts, FFDD5, runs from Photoshop and allows me to open 3 RAW files via Camera Raw, leaving them untouched and linear, and then blend them into a 16-bit HDR digital negative. Like any such file, the resulting negative still needs development but it now has a much better tonal range than the originals did individually. There is no tone mapping involved since the process is different and the image generated isn’t actual HDRI, which would be unreadable by my screen. We have simply combined the best of all three shots and end up with a dynamic range that is closer to 8 stops, as opposed to the 5 we started with.

Now some of the other actions written by Timothy come into play. Again his site has a very thorough explanation of the development process, but I’ll resume it by saying that I add adjustment layers on which I set brightness and contrast separately, as well as saturation. This is similar to using graduated neutral density filters in the field, only much more flexible and powerful. For example, to achieve a pleasant, natural looking sunset, I’ll typically have to set brightness for the mid-tones, boost contrast up, and then darken the sky and lighten the foreground. I sometimes end up with up to 10 or even 15 adjustment layers (right) - which are non destructive - that I’ll only flatten at the end.

Here, a short parenthesis is in order. I have been testing the new version of the blending script and it’s quite amazing. Working on DNG files instead, it is much more intelligent and allows for better batch processing. It will identify properly named groups of files in a folder and its subfolders, blend them accordingly into a high-res digital negative, and also generate a low-res version of the picture to which I can then apply my adjustment layers much faster. I save the newly developed low-res file with its layers and go back to the script to make it generate a high-res version of the original blend, completely developed and ready for final tweaking. Quite awesome.

My now developed digital negative routinely receives a dose of denoising combined with some sharpening, both of which are done by - yes you guessed it - more actions from FFDD5. However, I must insist on the fact that the HDR blending achieved by FFDD5 is by itself the most amazing denoising tool I’ve ever encountered. The process easily beats both Photoshop’s internal noise reduction tools and third-party plugins, and once again it is non-destructive. With FFDD5, noise suppression is obtained by adding tonal range to an image, rather than by suppressing existing noise in a conventional way which unavoidably causes a loss of sharpness and slight blur of the image. So in the end, while the main purpose of HDR blending remains for me the gain in tonal latitude required to render landscapes the way I see them, I value the noise reduction just as much, especially with printing in mind.

The following is a 200% crop of the results (keeping in mind that my lens is soft): both sides were processed with the same brightness, contrast and saturation adjustment layers. On the left is the correct single exposure from the series of 3 bracketed ones; on the right is the final blended HDR exposure, denoised and sharpened.

Last, I’ll straighten a tilted horizon, reduce lens distortion if needed, remove sensor spots if any and rethink my framing one last time, almost always aiming for compliance with the sacred Rule of Thirds or even attempting to ace the elusive Fibonacci spiral-based Divine Proportion.

My final image (left) is saved as a full size flattened TIFF with the ProPhoto color space embedded, and then reduced to web standards for my blog, a JPEG image of around 800px horizontal size, compressed at 90% quality in the sRGB space.

I hope this will have helped a few people find inspiration and motivation to explore new fields. I might sound biased towards my favorite HDR tools, and I am. With a bit of luck, my oversimplification of things will not have annoyed the pros or offended the authors of such great scripts.

Someone was recently commenting on Kodak’s new color sensors that will be hitting the market next year, and new digital cameras soon ridding themselves of their low-light slavery to the good old flash. HDR is the logical progression for in-camera picture optimization. It’s only a matter of time. Wait and see…

In the next post, I’ll add the usual slideshow of the final images taken along with the ones used here.

HDR is becoming trendy. Talking about it is cool. Doing it is audacious. Commenting on it is tricky. But make no mistake about it: HDR is not primarily a photography technique, it’s a traffic magnet. Read here « web and blog traffic » (even though I did also cause quite a bit of it when I had to setup my tripod in the middle of a street for a bracketed exposure.) So I will turn the power on, crank up the amps, magnetize my keyboard and see if I can get my share of traffic. This is all very formal business. The blogosphere might be a jungle but I am no monkey.

This being said, HDR, which stands for High Dynamic Range, could as well have been called CAT, or Confusing Ambiguous Topic. It’s one of those areas where a highly technical term is adapted and used by the common of mortals for trivial pursuits, just like when the Coriolis Effect notion gets distorted by an obnoxious geek and turned into a blog name, or when people start making their own weather forecast by noting how high their dog lifts his leg on the side of a lamppost, without any respect for the actual science of meteorology and the mastery of gambling it implies.

In essence, HDR is a concept that applies to areas way beyond my understanding and that are only studied in the original version of the 10th Photographer’s Guide to the Galaxy written by F. Stop. It would take years to even survey all the documentation available out there on the subject, and centuries to understand it. But understanding it doesn’t really help one that much because it is all highly subjective and the only practical skill needed in the HDR arena is the ability to turn a cold shoulder to nasty criticisms and to only reply when forced to do so by the unfair use of family triggers, as did Zidane on the field with his head.

Basically, as far as typical computer users are concerned, true HDR is an illusion. Our displays and most common applications aren’t designed to handle it. It’s a bit like me and cooking: I can talk about it all I want, when the time comes to boil the water and read the recipe, I’ve already given up and settled for a sandwich - I’m just not designed for it. In addition, common HDR is not even an original photography concept. It was borrowed from very advanced computer graphic design and film techniques and only retains in its photographic version the price tag (you can’t buy it at Future Shop), the glamour (almost as good as wearing original Vancouver-made Dayton boots like Johnny Depp’s), the complexity (even my quite powerful computer gives me time to go think about cooking and settling for a sandwich while processing an HDR image), and the stunning results, as all my fans know too well.

And therein lays the rub. No, not with my fans, I actually don’t have any (!) and I was just trying to keep my keywords consistent and since I started talking about the movie world... Anyway, the rub is that the results are stunning. You see, the fact that HDR photography normally implies hard work on the field followed by even harder work on the computer never seems to matter much. To the casual witness who pretends to be a photographer and knows it all, it’s too nice so it must be fake. To the seasoned pro, prehistoric monument of his profession with unchanged frozen habits and a killer routine, it is too new and daring and it breaks the long established rules that have brought him into the spotlight, hence it is cheating.

There only seems to be a narrow range of all the photographers who actually dare venture into the HDR realm and experiment with its creativity, remembering that photography is a form of art and as such, it will never be able to please everyone, nor should it ever want to.

And finally, I’d like to remind my esteemed readers, their family, heirs and legal guardians that even when provided by the utmost authority in the field, the HDR photography that is seen on the web, isn’t. It isn’t HDR photography, that is, not any more. The very act of posting a photo on the web as a common JPEG means reducing its dynamic and color range from the suprafabulousistic palette HDR was granting it to a cheapocrappy compromise version our senses and browser can interact safely with. And we still go « Oh! » and « Wow! »

So we should probably rename the technique WHDR, for Was High Dynamic Range, or my favourite and completely reworded DBIOA, Don’t Bitch It’s Only Art.

But the time has come for me to get a little more technicallistic. I will now attempt to explain HDR photography in the simplest terms, with my hands tied up behind my back in a stray jacket and hanging by my feet over the computer. I hope the rope can carry my weight because that touchpad looks like a rather small and hard landing strip. In any case I have lowered my keyboard’s repeat rate - in case I fail and fall.

Statement number one: even a modern camera can only record a limited dynamic range - in other words when we look at a very high contrast scene like a backlit saucisson on a picnic cloth somewhere near a lavender field in Provence (that’s only a random example), our eyes can adjust and show us the entire tonal range. The camera, however (and despite what the salesman said back at Future Shop) can only do its best and average the scene. It will have to blow the highlights, the shadows, or both. We’ll take a break here, so that you can digest this staggering fact. If you don’t know what it all means, just pretend, it will be explained later.

Statement number two: the first statement was too complicated for my own good and I’ve lost my way. I think I meant to say that HDR achieves a higher dynamic range by blending multiple exposures together and improving the tonal range. So in fact HDR was born to compensate for current camera hardware flaws and to render pictures that are closer to reality.

Oh wait a minute! What is reality? Old-timers used to say it was black & white. Dogs still do. Then photographers switched to color and began swearing only by film to represent reality. Then came the digital era and a new level of sensor-based reality recording was invented. And now there’s HDR as a new reality level. But the world as seen by a bee is as real as the one HDR shows us. Radio telescopes show us the limits of our universe and that’s all real. Auras and ghostly manifestations are probably real too. And so is the Matrix. So who’s to say what reality is and how we should render it? I prefer to think of HDR and conventional photography, as well as nuclear science, painting, writing and domestic disputes as different forms of reality representation.

In the end, HDR photography is like medicine, politics, storytelling and changing diapers: not an exact science but certainly an art.

• Note 1: yes, you read me right. Medicine is not a science, merely an art.

• Note 2: as a matter of fact, politics is the only art I know that systematically displeases the entire public and only serves the artist himself.

Further reading: disappointed by my sarcasm? Take no offense; I wrote this post after reading one too many heated exchange about HDR on a forum. But I do love HDR as a creative tool and use it often; I just think it should be addressed with a grain of salt. Ultimately, it’s not the photographer’s camera, nor his lens, nor his post-processing work that make the image; it’s all of the above. But most of all, it’s the photographer himself.

Here is a list of further (and more serious) references on the subject...

• HDR Tutorial (using Photomatix)
• Timothy Farrar’s FFDD5 set of actions for HDR in Photoshop
• A good HDR discussion also proving my point about traffic
• A comparison between the Photomatix and Photoshop HDR approaches

Stay tuned! An upcoming article will attempt to illustrate High Dynamic Range photography with the help of graphical examples and will also discuss the similarities between HDR and quantum physics...

With the coming of my one year anniversary in Vancouver, I’ve collected my favorite pictures (they all appeared on the blog this year) and whipped out a new gallery of 50 Vancouver and BC shots. Nothing new in there if you’ve been reading the blog, but it’s fun to have them all together to browse through. I’m also preparing a new HDR-related gallery that will be a witness to my fumbling around this fascinating emerging technique, which will - mark my words - in time become the only way to take pictures...

02-12-8 Update: URLs have changed. The Vancouver gallery is now located here.