Sorry about that. 🙂 I meant nothing personal.
There is "reason" behind your reason, so you make sense and I can respect that. What doesn't make sense are some of the reactions I've gotten from random people in the past regarding some of my HDRs. It usually goes something like this paraphrasal: "Oh noes!!111 U uzd teh fotoshop!!111 U looze!!111" I've seen that line of reasoning enough times anyway.
What cracks me up is how, there have been two or three times (on boards other than Macrumors) where I posted an HDR straight out of Photomatix, and hadn't even performed any post-Photomatix adjustments. And the response I got was "Uh, could you not Photoshop your pics so much..." or some such similar line of nonsense. Beware anyone who employs the word "Photoshop" as some kind of generalized verb. It is safe at assume they are totally uninformed about digital photography methods, and thus aren't worth paying attention to.
I can see your line of reasoning though since you like to concentrate on sports and so forth. But I think you should give HDR a go for your flowers and landscapes! It can be used for both practical and artistic uses. I think you would find it quite useful for practical enhancements on, say the occasional flower or landscape shots. 🙂
I spose. I think if there is to be a discussion, maybe create a thread to discuss HDR. I have heard this discussion many times before and am tired of it, so I was happy when this thread was created just to post the HDR photos. I dont want to see pointless arguing.
IOW, it is fine to discuss it, I just dont think this should be the place for it.
I think it's okay to discuss different methods for HDR.
Anyway, I actually kind of enjoyed the arguing in this thread, if only because it highlights the silliness of the "purists" who regard photography as a rote science instead of an art form, and regard computing in photography as unethical.
But you highlight your condescending attitude with such a statement, lol. Is Man Ray art, is Ansel Adams art, are they photography? Yes to both answers, just depends on what you like. I prefer HDR used to give a sense of imagery that better approximates what the human eye 'sees' in a scene (even better sometimes if you can get greater DR than the human eye can perceive). This is something the human eye can do, which neither film or digitally images are presently capable of doing...will be moot question, I think, in a decade or two.
I don't care for the 'surrealistic' imagery of valdore's initial group of HDR processed images. Does mean that are terrible (though some people who want only images that look as though how the human eye sees it, will think they look terrible), just one of preferences. I prefer the type of imagery Ansel Adams captured. I hate Ken Rockwell's excessively over-amped contrasty visually 'popping' images...go take a look as these scenes with your eyes, and you know the colors are more subdued. Ken R is as too Pam Anderson, as Ansel Adams is to Jessica Alba
😀.
What i find more amusing about all this discussion of examples posted is that HDR is reduced DR as viewed off of the internet on a typical computer screen...you are missing a lot of detail right there, so you aren't really seeing the benefits here, and everyone is commenting like they can see that full range, lol. It ain't so!
BTW, as to CGI, uh hello, all digital images are CGI...they are digital, Do'h. Meaning what is essentially a computer in the form of the imagine processing engine (assuming you are not capturing raw data directly out off the sensor, which some high-end camcorders allow) it constructing a digital image...it's computer generated to look as closely approximate to what your eye sees. So it's merely how those bits have been represented, as accurate representations of what the human eye can see, or some
exaggeration or compromise of this. Why do you think the tilt/shift lenses are so popular? Because they help correct for limitations in what the lens can produce, such that it better approximates what you see with your eyes.
Some people love the surrealistic imagery, some don't. if you post pictures, expect people to weigh in with their likes or dislikes as to that particular HDR image. I like some of them, I don't care for others, it's not about being one "right" way.