Old Whalers Cabin

Posted by Don Smith (California, United States) on 1 August 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

Here is another HDR image - 7 frames this time - of an old whalers cabin in Point Lobos State Reserve along the Monterey Bay, California. HDR allowed for the shadows amongst the cypress trees and the highlights in the clouds to both record detail in late afternoon backlight. These images were combined and tonemapped in Photomatix Pro 3.0.1. The new upgrade allows for the correction of chromatic abberation which was a concern with many of my HDR images. If you wish to purchase the software, use my promotional code donsmithphotography at checkout and receive a 15% discount! As always, please check out my site at Don Smith Photography.com for photos and tutoriols (including one on using Photomatix Pro).

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Comments (7)

Marie Le Corre from Voiron, France

Old yes but beautiful

1 Aug 2008 6:13am

Marion from Nanaimo, BC, Canada

Your HDR images are wonderful Don.

1 Aug 2008 7:00am

Don Smith from California, United States

Hi Marie and Marion,

Thanks to both of you for your nice comments. Marion, my goal with HDR is to make the scene look natural. Many people don't like the look of HDR - they say "it looks HDR'd." This is because it is easy to get carried away with doing it - trying to put the "Wow" factor into every image. The same was true when people first got a hold of the Hue/Saturation command in Photoshop. So many images were "oversaturated" and the term, "looks Photoshoped" was coined.

My goal with HDR is to overcome the sensor's inability to render the 11 stops of light (2000:1 contrast ratio) that the human eye can see. To those who say: "I want my images to look more like film" is sort of going backwards. The best chromes (including Fuji Velvia) rendered at best a latitude of 4 stops. Today's sensors at best render 6 stops. I feel we have maxed-out in terms of megapixels; my hope is that camera manufactures put more effort into expanding dynamic range. Bose did it with speakers; we now have audio that exceeds the scope of human hearing. I'm sure we will get there with digital cameras once the R&D money is directed more towards this area.

1 Aug 2008 1:56pm

Francesc B. from région parisienne, France

Hi, Don... I come from the blog of Marie… Thank you for all these explanations above… it is a very beautiful HDR, with a good control of the post processing. Yes, this scene looks natural, but with this bonus... I agree… the too saturated HDR always doesn't give a good result.

1 Aug 2008 5:03pm

One from Açores, Portugal

Very nice .... As always.

1 Aug 2008 10:53pm

Don Smith from California, United States

Good morning Francesc and One,

Thanks for checking in. We are in the infancy stages with HDR. It will only get better - very exciting times! The hardest thing is for me to get in the mode of thinking HDR when in the field making images.

2 Aug 2008 2:30pm

Janice from Denver, United States

great shots Don! I'll be contacting you about your workshops

3 Aug 2008 3:32am

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