Saturday, October 26, 2013

Hyper-Realistic HDR

Creating 'hyper-realistic' HDR photographs has not really been a forte of mine. Hyper-realistic means going beyond creating a realistic photograph (HDR or otherwise), and taking it into something perhaps a bit more extra dimensional. Critics tend to cause this style 'over-cooked', meaning they have taken the HDR too far. This criticism is completely justified in many cases, but I think the hyper-realistic look is one of the key looks of HDR pictures, and encourages many photographers to give it a try.

I have tended to go for a look that uses HDR techniques, but still tries to give the photo a realistic look, and not providing an image that was an unrealistic representation of the scene. However, I have tried my hand at more hyper-realistic techniques recently, to give a particular scene more edge, and yes something beyond reality. In another sense, going for a bit more detail in architectural pictures. It is important to note that the hyper-realistic look is not suitable for all HDR scenes, and I will certainly stick to my usual HDR techniques for landscape scenes, away from an urban environment.

This picture was taken on the Oxford photo walk recently, and the idea as stated above, was to give it a look perhaps beyond reality (even though of course all the details were there when I took the picture). 

I hope you like it, but in any case, let me know what your thoughts are on 'hyper-realistic' HDRs.

4 comments:

  1. Would agree on many but a few you can get away with as long as its over cooked. Like this one hehe!!

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  2. Hi Pete. I agree with your comments. The 'hyper-realistic' look definitely has a place despite being frowned upon by certain people!

    As long as it is free of obvious artefacts ie. halos etc, it can work well such as here. Nicely processed with a real gothic feel going on!

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  3. Thanks for the comment Tim! Much appreciated as always. Yeah I had to do a bit of clone-stamping work to get rid of some halos, because after a while they are really noticeable if not obvious at first.

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