It's 2014 - and people are still hating HDR?!

Last night I was struggling again for inspiration for a blog post. This morning however, I was provided by all the inspiration I need, upon seeing a retweet on Twitter by Jeremy Cowart:

Now for the record, I must state I genuinely don't understand what 'the Nickelback of photography' means. Nickelback I remember were a popular rock band from about 10 years ago, but am not sure if there are any connotations associated with the band. However, I must assume the comment was negative, as the original tweeter goes onto state that he is baffled by the popularity of HDR.

I have never been one to get involved in the whole 'I hate HDR' debate, because it is pointless. Some people like something, and others don't. How does that prove either way that something is good or bad? What surprises me though, is that this 'HDR-hating' is still going on in 2014. The fact that people have to tweet this stuff shows how popular HDR is, and clearly I'm guessing they are threatened. I am also genuinely surprised that an established photographer like Jeremy Cowart makes a statement like this, when he has many friends in the HDR field such as Trey Ratcliff and RC. Cowart is even part of Trey's new business venture, The Arcanum.

I know how the game works by the way. They are just trying to be controversial, to make people react and get more audience interaction. I have seen it so many times, again without any real care, but again on this occasion am just surprised it still goes on with HDR. It is the natural system of change that a new thing that comes along, has to be resisted, before it is accepted. So of course HDR like many other things has to be argued against, before becoming an established part of the photography mainstream. It seems that comments like above, are the final desperate attempts of la resistance to quell something that is not only established, but continues to grow bigger and bigger. They may not get it, but many people do, and HDR is getting better with very year that passes.

So for all the HDR lovers, here's a classic HDR photo of mine:

Desert Camp Egypt

Well I have returned from an extraordinary week in Egypt, full of sunshine, snorkelling and plenty of travelling. I'm not the type on holiday to just sit by the pool, though there was a little bit of that. Unfortunately, a week in the sun can go oh so quickly, but we managed to pack quite a lot into that week. The most interesting part was travelling to Israel and Palestine, to visit The Holy Cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem (not sure that is a city?), as well as a stop at the Dead Sea. So as you can imagine I have I hope plenty of photos to share, and rather than give you a whole transcript of the holiday right now, I will take each stage one at a time.

Today's picture was actually taken the day before we returned from holiday. After the exhausting trip to Israel and Palestine, we relaxed for a couple of days, but wanted to do a final excursion before returning to England. So we decided to do Camel Riding and Star Gazing in the desert. We had booked the trip through a vendor based outside the hotel and it began rather nervously, when we were collected from the hotel, by 3 men in what can only be described as a makeshift Derek Trotter minibus (blue not yellow though), complete with no ID and plenty of arabic writing inside. Having arrived at the desert and satisfied that we weren't being kidnapped, we did indeed enjoy a great evening of the previously mentioned activities, and also learned about the Bedouin (Egyptian Tribesman) lifestyle, as well as being entertained with various dances as well. So no this is not a camp in the military sense, but still a place you could easily enjoy the peace and quiet of the desert for the night. We were able to watch the sun going down from a good vantage point, and it was at this time that this photo was taken. It is a 3 shot HDR image, taken handheld with my Nikon D90.

I have been using the D90 a lot recently (for my Miami and Egypt trips), as opposed to the much bigger and better D700, simply because of the ease of travelling with it. I never planned to go back into shooting with the D90, and indeed it can be frustrating having to deal with issues again that are not a problem with the D700, such as low level light handling, and the amount of noise the D90 generates. Still, it is light, portable and has a VR (the anti-shaky thing) lens, as opposed to my 24-70mm lens I have for my D700, which is not. I look forward though now to going back to using the D700 on a regular basis, and with Spring approaching soon hopefully, will certainly be out and about getting some 'Home' pictures.

The Lighthouse at Beachy Head

Last time I blogged (Thursday) I displayed a picture with a couple of textures blended in, something I went onto describe is an aspect I do enjoy adding to pictures in Photoshop. I have again used a texture in today's picture but to a much subtler and softer effect. I used the same sea texture I described on Thursday, though have only used it much effect on the sea itself in this picture, and some of the land. This picture is actually more a combination of HDR and texture, than just texture itself. Although the picture on itself was good (and to most old school photographers, probably how they would say it should have been), again I wanted to make it a bit more interesting and make it stand out a bit more. Creating an HDR (from a single RAW file), layer masking it with aspects of the original RAW image, and then gently blending in a texture, helped me get the look I was after with this scene.

This is the famous lighthouse off the Beachy Head cliff, within the South Downs National Park in East Sussex. Sadly, Beachy Head is famous for being a notorious suicide spot, but the natural landscape surrounding the area is a wonderful opportunity for photographers. I was delighted to spend a day here taking pictures of the landscape, my only regret being that I was somewhere else for the evening. I'm sure there would be great pictures to get in the sunset period, so a good reason to go back in future.

The Castle Hever

It seems a bit of a 'safe' picture to go for today but nonetheless here is a closeup HDR picture of Hever Castle. I was working on a different picture for a little while but feel like I hit a 'wall' with that one. I'm sure other photographers know what I mean, you process a picture for so long but still can't quite find that something missing from the picture. So rather than post a picture I'm not entirely happy with, I put it to one side to come back to at a later date. More on that should I find that missing something and post that picture! This obviously did not quite pose so many processing headaches, though it took me a while to correct some imbalances with the different areas of the sky. It's an HDR from 2 exposures (0, -2) and processed in Lightroom, Photoshop and Viveza 2.

The Old Farmhouse

Luckily we had a small break in the blanket cloud cover we have had in England the last couple of weeks, for me to capture this picture yesterday. This came out of a project I have been given recently to take some pictures for postcards of Woolton Hill, which was the village I grew up in. The brief was to capture Woolton Hill in summertime and I was fortunately able to complete most of the pictures a few weeks ago when we had a heatwave. The brief sunny weather yesterday allowed me to complete the pictures I intended to get for this project.

This farmhouse is actually just outside Woolton Hill near a neighbouring village called East Woodhay. I don't think I will be using this picture for the project, mainly because it's obviously somebody's property and I would in a normal world, probably need permission to print. I was intrigued by this scene though as I was driving round narrow country lanes, hoping that a scene would jump out at me. It would have perhaps looked more perfect at sunrise but I'll plan that one maybe for another time!

Oxford Sighs

The second appearance on the website for the Oxford version of the Bridge of Sighs. I was initially quite happy with my first iteration of this bridge (back in January) but it didn't have much impact on this website or any other ones. I started to lose a bit of interest in it as well, despite it actually taking me an age to process! I knew today's picture of the bridge (from a further back perspective) would eventually make it onto this blog, as I believed it had more interesting photographic elements to it.

I also knew that this was likely to be a monochrome HDR. Whereas I liked the colours the picture offered, I felt like I had already done that with my previous picture. Therefore, I wanted a bit more of a gritty, historical look to this version. After a fair bit of processing in Lightroom and Photoshop, I shipped it over to Silver Efex Pro 2 to get the monochrome look I was after. There are many great black and white options in there as you would expect (though I think Lightroom 4 can give you amazing control for your monochrome pictures as well) but I often find myself going towards the sepia/vintage look, as I have applied here.

For Success or Art?

The New Forest Heathland

It's rare that I decide to gear a blog towards the current photographic industry but this is where my blog today leads to. I should offer discussions like this more often. The thing I've been trying to answer a lot recently, especially with my own work, is do you (anyone) take photographs for art or for success?

Now I have no doubt at all that we all got into photography because we loved the idea of seeing a particular scene and wanting to capture it as perfectly as possible. We thoroughly enjoy it and this is what has led us further and further down the photographic path. However, with all the social media and technology raging in the world these days, I am seriously starting to question whether the love of photography seems to come after the importance of raising one's 'profile'. I'm trying to figure out in myself where I fit into this as well.

Most people will know that I am an optimistic thinker and accept success in all forms. If someone is well known, they are definitely doing something right. What perhaps is bothering me a little now though is the fact that quality in the photographic internet world seems to becoming sacrificed in place of exposure (no pun intended there!).

Of course, quality art is an interesting concept to debate in the modern world itself. And yes I would love to raise my profile as a photographer as well. But the problem I find is the whole 'get your name out there' concept, which is very unnatural and awkward for me. It does go against artistic principles I know to have a blog that promises 3 pictures a week because art itself should never have a quantitive promise or restriction. It should take as absolutely long as it needs to take. One person may have hundreds of poor and unpopular photographs but if there is one picture that they worked on for years and became a masterpiece, whatever they did in the social media world would be irrelevant. Art, and particularly masterpieces, are timeless and not affected by what happens in the social media world. There are great artists who probably do not own a computer but having focused entirely on their craft their whole lives, profile-raising does not become necessary.

So I find myself again questioning whereabouts do I sit on this issue? I guess I have a foot in both camps. I have this blog site which I love working on and I also have a Twitter page which I also enjoy updating now and then. But truthfully, I know it isn't social media that is going to lead to any potential success I have. It's simply how good the photos are that I am taking. This is all there is to it. I would happily trade in never trending on Twitter or becoming part of some Google+ debate if it meant taking years to becoming appreciated as someone who worked hard on his craft. In the meantime, find me some more people on the net with perhaps little 'exposure' (sorry again) but some mind-blowing photography and you will have found yourself a new fan.

Roulette

As I promised, here is a 'classic' (self-professed of course) from last year, which I'm sure most people will recognise as the London Eye. It is one of my more important pictures though, as this is one that has sold and is sometimes referred to by people who have seen my work as one of their favourites. I certainly hope it goes to show that you can get good daytime HDR pictures as well, it's just a case of using a bit of creativity and of course covering the necessary range! Perhaps it would have been a bit more accomplished if I had managed to get more of the London Eye in the picture but that wouldn't make it perfect, as towards the bottom of the picture, the wheel is broken up by the entry platform. Photography of course is not about trying to fit every bit of a subject in the picture either, just that people know what you are trying to represent and capture, and in that sense, I wouldn't change anything about this picture.

I did mention the other day about having a lack of new material recently and that has coincided with a lot of thoughts about some gear upgrade, so watch this space! In the meantime, it's my responsibility now to go out and find more potential photographic moments and that I fully intend to do.

Ad Land London

So hopefully now my busy period that began with moving property less than a month ago and culminating with me being best man at my mate's wedding on Saturday, is over. I know life doesn't really work like that and just when you expect a break something else comes along, but for now it seems I will have more time to focus on photography, get back to putting a lot of effort into this website and seeing much more over what everyone else has been doing.

Today's picture is of perhaps one of the key advertising spots in London, if not the country, which of course is Piccadilly Circus. This was taken a little later than my previous Piccadilly picture a few weeks ago but is another attempt to capture the hustle and bustle of London at night. I know it's not perfect and if I could have captured more of the car speeding past at the bottom I would have, but until I purchase a full frame camera, I'll just have to work with the limitations of my D90!

Amidst all the advertising that appears in this picture, there is a saying (and I didn't notice this until after I'd processed this) which is 'We will either find a way, or make one'. It dates back to Hannibal and has been one of my mottos in life ever since I heard it a few years ago.

Welcome to Newbury

Having moved into my new apartment now, I have one more task left before I anticipate my busy period being over. That is, on Saturday I will be Best Man to one of my mates at his wedding. It is a great honour to do this and the first time I have been a best man but like most of them around this time, nearly all my thoughts are on my speech that I will have to give. I am working on it but naturally want to spend as much time as possible to make sure it's really good and dare I say it, funny. That's the best man's job really though isn't it? Although I'm really looking forward to this weekend, I will be very happy that on Sunday I can concentrate once more on having much more time to myself and photography. I'm hoping that I will have a new picture to post on Thursday but Sunday will almost certainly be another one of my 'classics'.

Today's picture is one I took as I was about to travel to London a couple of weeks ago. This is just outside the Newbury Railway Station and welcomes people to this rural town once they get off the train. As the train station is actually at the end of this road to the right, I can't help but feel that the sign should face that way but I'm sure there are reasons why it does not. This is a HDR picture from 3 exposures with an extra exposure created out of the -2 exposure to capture more of the sun and the colour of the early morning sky.

Castle Combe Bridge

I was going to post another picture of my local area Newbury today, but with the last 2 pictures being of Newbury, I'm worried they will all start to look a bit deja-veux. Therefore, I've decided to post another oldie from last year.

Castle Combe is a very picturesque and historical village in the Wiltshire countryside. Having a very unique feel to it, it has often been used in television programmes and Hollywood movies, most recently War Horse by Steven Spielberg. In fact, I wanted to get this picture about a year before I actually took it, but when we arrived in Castle Combe, access to the village was closed because they were filming War Horse.

It's fantastic for photography but is also a creatively a challenge to try and find unique angles and aspects to capture. It's probably been done before but for this picture I climbed down from the main path, down to this little stony, weedy area by the river to try and capture a view that encapsulates the bridge (that is a key feature of Castle Combe) and also the medieval houses in the background.

Newbury Twilight

                                                    It seems that it is often the case in a photographic blogger's journey that one has to plead busyness for his or her lack of activity or content. I have chosen to plead that case this week. I am in the middle of a very busy house move which is obviously (I hope you guys understand!?) taking up an enormous amount of my time (and money!). It is my fiancés and I first property together and we are currently buying and filling it with all kinds of furniture necessary. We are very excited about the move, though it is a bit of a drain on my creative energy. I still need to get round to fully writing up that Piccadilly blog from the other day but I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has kept coming to the blog site, I will have much more time to return the favour over the Easter weekend when most of the hard work with our place should be done.

Today's picture is more like my kind of work from last year but that does kind of make sense as it was pictured then. It was photographed the same night as one of my more successful pictures, Newbury Canal at Night. If I'm honest I would have liked to post something perhaps much more recent but as I stated earlier, time has just not made it easy. I used a couple of hours spare to process the Piccadilly picture on Saturday before heading to one of my mates Stag Do's in Southampton but other than that time has been spent purely on the property move. Until Thursday.....

Friday Night, Piccadilly

Today's written part part of the blog is very short for the moment, as I am in Southampton this week. I took this photo in Picadilly Circus (London) on Friday night and got round to processing it pretty quick. Hope you like it and thanks for looking, when I get back later today, I'll have more to write about it.

Beautiful Bibury

Over the weekend I finally got round to shooting some new pictures, having been over a month since I last took photos. It wasn't a massive affair, I just walked round my local town of Newbury on Sunday evening looking for any potential sights in the cool spring evening. I think I've got 1 or 2 good ones, the first of which I will probably display on Thursday but for now I post another picture from the spectacular village of Bibury in Gloucestershire.

I posted quite a few shots of Bibury on my old blog website but off the top of my head, I think this is the first one I have posted here. It's one of those villages like Castle Combe in Wiltshire that could be used extensively in period films, as it still has a very authentically historical feel about it. The houses in this picture (Arlington Row) originally date back to the 14th century I believe and there aren't many villages left that have that type of architecture remaining! On a summer's day especially, Bibury is an absolute joy to walk around and of course fantastic for photography as well.

Burano

As I said on Thursday, today I have chosen to post another of my 'classics'. I know it is perhaps a bit self-indulgent to call them that but I only refer that to some of my pictures which I feel have done particularly well, either on the internet or with the wider public at exhibitions. I don't deny that I do want to get more of my pictures from last year on this website, as people may find it harder to find them elsewhere or may have not seen them before at all. So whereas I'm primarily fully committed to posting new pictures on this blog site, I will continue to post an oldie now and then.

Of all my pictures, I know this picture from the island of Burano in Venice, divides opinion the most. It really is a case of people either love it or hate it. Many younger people and none photographers will often tell me that this is their favourite out of all my pictures, whereas people with artistic or photographic experience tend to be unsure, even sceptical about it. If you have been to Burano, you will know that the houses are genuinely all different colours but people sometimes people suspect I have changed them on this picture, something I would never wish to do. It remains one of my favourite pictures though and of course I am delighted that so many people do enjoy this one.

Timeless Torcello

A picture almost a year in the making.... Perhaps it is my last picture to ever come out of my trip to Venice in April 2011. It is certainly a picture I have been obsessing about for almost the entire time I have been home from Venice. It is quite a long story but Torcello was one of the places I was keen to visit during my trip to the Venetian Lagoon. I had seen pictures of this place, which by the way is the Church of Santa Fosca, and this became high on my priority list of pictures I wanted to take. The day we visited Torcello was a typically glorious Venetian sunny day and though there were a fair few tourists arriving via the vaperettos, it was also a quiet and peaceful place. This gave me opportunities to take the picture of this beautiful church that I had been imagining, though the story of why the picture took so long to complete began that day as well.

You see if you look at many other pictures of this church (and maybe I will show the original RAW pictures soon to highlight my point) you will notice that there is a church spire behind the top left of this church. It is actually the spire to the cathedral that lies next to this little church (click this link). The day we visited, my old enemy in photography had covered the whole of the spire - scaffolding. I took the usual 3 bracketed shots with the intention of creating an HDR but when I was back home in England, nothing could make me nearly satisfied with the pictures I tried, as the scaffolding was hugely distracting and very ugly. I knew that for the picture to be any good, I had to get rid of it. This was an amazingly tough job, as it was not a simple spot heal / clone stamp job. The tone and colour gradient of the sky was different throughout the whole picture and the church spire complete with scaffolding was too large an object (and connected visually to the church in the picture) to easily displace. My photoshop skills have never been good, so I knew as well that I would just have to wait for a time I could easily remove (without being noticeable) the spire in the background.

Well it wasn't easy, but 3 hours working on this picture last week finally paid off and the blood & sweat that went into this picture, began to produce a result I was very happy with. In the end I blended the picture with a texture of sandstone I took from rocks in the Czech Republic, to give it it's final rustic look. I've called it 'Timeless Torcello' because this church alone dates back 1000 years. The cathedral next to it (Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta) was founded in 639AD. Torcello is an ancient place and in fact was the first colonised island in the Venetian lagoon. If you ever do visit Venice, I promise you will not regret visiting the very special island of Torcello.

Downton Abbey Part 1

As promised, this is a Downton Abbey weekend on this blog for all the fans of the hit TV show. As I have stressed before, I have never watched it myself but I do live a 5 minute drive away from the real downton abbey, which is of course Highclere Castle. This gives me easy access to take pictures of this fabulous country house. I say 'easy access' but that's not strictly true, Highclere Castle is closed to visitors for most of the year and getting close to it at other times is anything but easy. Hence, I have taken landscape shots of the castle before such as this (click for link). The picture you see today was taken while I was at the Battle Proms event last year, which led me to be able to get closer to the castle than ever before. This is an HDR image, made of 3 different exposures.

The landscape shot I linked to in the last paragraph is one of my most popular pictures. It has actually sold quite well in the past and is my second most viewed picture on Flickr. I know this is partly because people have linked to it on Downton Abbey blog sites, which I am most grateful for. That is one of the reasons I wanted to do this Downton Abbey weekend, to give fans of the show a couple of great (and large) views of the building that has once again become culturally significant. Feel free to use this on blogs and websites, the only thing I ask is that you link back to this site. As it suggests from the title, this is part 1 of a double bill (to get a TV pun in there), tomorrow's picture will be a none-HDR shot but one I think is better than this one and that I hope you'll agree. Until tomorrow.....

DID YOU KNOW: The architect of Highclere Castle, Sir Charles Barry, was also the architect of a small group of buildings in London called the Houses of Parliament.

Madonna Dell'Orto

I've decided to post an 'oldie' (it's not really that old) today due to being pretty swamped with none-photographic issues recently. I'm in the process of buying a property at the moment and will hopefully be moving in very soon. It's taking up a lot of my time anyway and rather than rush a picture together, I decided to post a favourite of mine from last year. I have posted this one on Flickr before but never as a blog.

This is inside the magnificent Madonna Dell'Orto church in Venice, not too far from the Rialto bridge. I took this picture using a gorilla-pod, whilst sitting on the very back bench of the church. It was one of the first pictures I processed on my return from Venice and though I did not choose to use it in my exhibition in October last year, it still remains one of my personal favourites. The paintings on the far wall behind the alter are truly spectacular and I think one of the reasons I like this particular photograph.

The Evening Mist

There's been quite a lot going on in the photographic world recently with the announcement of the Nikon D4 and D800. For the last couple of years my realistic dream camera has been to own a D700 which has been out for quite a few years now and everybody knew that a replacement was fairly imminent. Now the D800 has been released, I have a new goal of ideal camera I'd like to own. I know there has been a lot of talk as well about the future of DSLR's and 'mirrorless' cameras appearing on the scene and I think it will be interesting to see how things look in a couple of years, but personally I can't see DSLR's disappearing. My own personal concern at the moment is simply to take more pictures. I'm in one of those periods where although I have hundreds and hundreds of potential pictures on my hard drive, I feel like I'm running low on 'material'. Like most photographers I'm sure, the ratio of photos I take compared to the ones that get processed is incredibly small and it's definitely a case of quality over quantity. That's why it feels a bit like I'm running on low. I'm going through a lot of the archives at the moment to find those overlooked 'gems'!

Today's picture was one I took a few weeks ago while out on my canal walk in Hungerford, Berkshire. There are lots of fields adjacent to the canal and I took a quick detour from picturing the sunset over the canal to picture this field that already started to gather the evening mist.

Dominus Illuminatio Mea

It sounds like something out of the  Da Vinci Code, but actually Dominus Illuminatio Mea means 'The Lord is my light'. It is the motto of Oxford University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. This emblem slash statue is above one of the great entrances into one of the university buildings. There are so many university buildings cluttered around Oxford, that it is difficult for me as a visitor to remember which is which. Despite only living 30-40 miles away from Oxford, I visit there surprisingly rarely and know even less about it. I can say that this entrance is near the Bridge of Sighs and behind the Sheldonian theatre. This is an HDR picture but taken from a single RAW file. There was no need to add any bracketed images, as this single picture had captured all the dynamic range necessary.

Have you seen my Flickr Photostream?

There are many avenues for photographers to show their pictures these days, but my personal favourite is still Flickr. I know it lacks the functionality of other websites and is perhaps a bit dated, but after initially developing a passion for photography, Flickr was the place I gained a ton of inspiration and spurred me on to want to create pictures like some of the fantastic ones I saw there. I went through a stage last year of having title plates on my Flickr pictures, which I got a bit bored of after a while. However, now I've decided that beginning with today's picture, I am going to introduce a universal border (without text) on all my Flickr pictures. At various times I've been for and against borders and title plates, but now I've just decided I want my Flickr pictures to have their own separate identity and an alternative way of presenting my pictures. So if you've never been there before, please begin seeing my pictures in a different way:

Pete Halewood Flickr Photostream