Is HDR on this type of photography any good?

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xSitara™

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I've always thought that HDR is made for landscape photography, my opinion of it has always been that it looks awesome when it brings detail out in landscape shots.

I have noticed photographers apply it to many different types of shots, I thought i'd give it a go on one of mine.

What are your thoughts?

Original

2-3.jpg

HDR

1-3.jpg
 
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Well, I like what it has done to the water, but I am not too sure about the colour changes on the rest of the photograph.
I can never get an HDR of any of my shots to work in a way that I like though. This is at least 50% there!
 
coldpenguin said:
Well, I like what it has done to the water, but I am not too sure about the colour changes on the rest of the photograph.
I can never get an HDR of any of my shots to work in a way that I like though. This is at least 50% there!
Click to expand...

I'm a cheater because I didn't actually learn and do this the proper way, I just have some HDR presets in lightroom that I thought i'd make use of so I tried, there are some parts in the photo that go off, I mean the orange isn't really orange anymore lol.
 
HDR should be used when you want to get detail in both a dark shadow and a bright highlight, where you couldn't normally get it with a single photograph. E.g., a landscape shot with a bright sky and the land in shade. You have almost the opposite in the above example, you seem to have lost some of the shadow and highlight detail.

I would have said your original image is pretty much OK. If anything there is a very slight loss of highlight detail so you could work the HDR to bring that back but to be honest, I don't think it needs it.
 
As Mohain says HDR is meant to allow you to capture a larger dynamic range than you could otherwise. So I can't see why you would want to use it in this case as the image is clearly captured completely in the normal image.

If it's the popular "over cooked" HDR style that you're wanting then you can actually make the image look like that without using HDR. It's just that many people tend to end up with that look from using HDR so people assume that's the 'HDR' look. Where for me there is no HDR look. If done (to what I would call) correctly then you should not be able to tell by looking at an image that HDR was used.
 
I took the liberty of trying your pic in one of the HDR software that I use and got a totally different result, closer to your original but with the detail and the water boosted (I won't post it because you have edits unticked) And thats the thing with HDR, theres so many varaitions from software and the way in which the photographer takes and edits the shots.
I'll often use it on shots other than landscape.
 
swanseamale47 said:
I took the liberty of trying your pic in one of the HDR software that I use and got a totally different result, closer to your original but with the detail and the water boosted (I won't post it because you have edits unticked) And thats the thing with HDR, theres so many varaitions from software and the way in which the photographer takes and edits the shots.

I'll often use it on shots other than landscape.
Click to expand...

Likewise, I ofetn use the process of 'fake' HDR on images, or sometimes just regions within an image.

I only use true HDR when I want a natural looking result! :cuckoo:

I think if you tone down the result on that image it may well work, but it's too garish as it is.
 
Thanks everyone very much for your response.

To be honest I never ever researched HDR because I never felt the need to use it. I had a few HDR presets on my lightroom and thought it gave quite a cool effect on some of my photos so I decided to use it for this one.

After reading the comments here I now understand what HDR is used for and i'm very interested in reading up on it now, seems very interesting.

Thankyou guys =]
 
A really good book is called hdr photography by Pete Carr well worth a read.
 
Not in my opinion. The feathers are delicate and HDR 'destroys' that aspect
 
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