I'd be curious to hear opinions on this.
I never tire of a play of light in the landscape or subsequent photographs - because the effect is always different and new. Every dawn is new, every twilight too. But the distinctive characteristics of HDR photography get wearisome to me, at any rate - because they are so predictable. Stonework and faces look grubby... like they could do with a scrub. Cloudy skies are redrawn in charcoal. The scene, though recognisable, is one step removed from reality, verging towards the cartoon-like.
These people may have gathered for a concert but, once the scene has been put through the HDR wringer, it seems more likely that they have assembled, on the day of judgement, to await the apocalypse.
One problem with HDR, IMO, is that if a dramatic effect is awesome, then theres every incentive to make a picture even more dramatic (
really awesome). Its the same in the movies, with every car chase having to be more spectacular than the last. Its what the public expects: ever more eye-popping stunts.
Wanting to see if it was really as bad as the critics said, I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3: two hours and more of frenzied, unbelievable, computer generated action... without a shred of coherent plot. When effects come so thick and fast, we become desensitised, numbed, maybe bored. Well, this is how I feel about HDR.
I use HDR for some interiors, some sunsets, some scenes where its particularly hard to compress a range of lighting conditions into a single shot. I dont draw attention to the method, any more than I would about using a grey grad filter a more traditional tool for keeping detail in a sky which might otherwise be washed out. Using HDR indiscriminately, on every picture, seems perverse to me... like trying to force every picture into the landscape format, when some would look better square or portrait or panoramic.
This is just my point of view, and I dont want to start another argument. HDR pix obviously please a lot of people, on this forum and elsewhere. But I pass on heavily HDRd pix, because they have crossed my own individual boredom threshhold... and they aint coming back.
