Posts Tagged ‘blending’

Blending Case Study 2

January 24, 2012
By Alister
1 Comment

Until a camera comes along that is capable of recording naturally occurring dynamic range as our eyes see it, photography is a compromise or at best a technical challenge.

HDR, or Hight Dynamic Range images have become a cliche of contrast, wild tone and unrealistic representations of what we were seeing. Having said that, there are some who manage to create some excellent images using the available tools.

My goal is to create images with realistic contrast and dynamic range, but using a manual blending method rather than expecting a software algorithm to make the perfect choices for me. In Blending Case Study 1, we took a very simple example of an image where the transition between the sky and the foreground was a straight line, a simple gradient across the two layers created the desired effect.

January 20, 2012
By Alister
4 Comments

Every landscape photographer is aware that what the eye sees is not what the camera delivers. Numerous techniques exist to control dynamic range within a single exposure, for example using Graduated Neutral Density Filters, but they have serious limitation in scenes with extreme dynamic range and/or if there are trees, rocks or other subjects bisecting the area where the graduated line is going to pass. We’ve all seen images with sea stacks with unnaturally dark tops rising into a beautifully exposed sky.

Contemporary processing techniques are opening doors to photographers enabling us to create image that have natural looking dynamic range, even in extreme situations.