Hoppin' the waterplug just for old HDR's sake.

Spent Thursday afternoon filling my camera with more sources of mediocre HDR down at the University. I have to admit: trying to see this stuff is much harder than I expected. You don't really know what you're going to get until you're staring at the tonemap and you're clicking on commit.

It's somewhat frustrating, I must confess. You think you have something good in camera and when you get it loaded it ... well. It's just utter crap. I like the look of HDR photography when, to the naked eye, it appears delicately painted on, brush stroke by brush stroke. I suppose it will get better with time, but we'll see.

I think my problem with the latest HDR trash was that I was photographing subjects that were in full sun so I didn't get the under-exposed part of the range that I wanted (or needed). It was just bright. The photos didn't look all that good. In fact, I ended up deleting a few hundred because they just didn't work out well.


But, we'll see how this goes. I need to read up more on the topic to see what I'm missing. This whole shooting blind idea is not very fruitful. I'd be better off throwing it all up against the wall and seeing what sticks. But, we'll see. The worst that happens is that I delete more photos. C'est la vie.

The photo above is the side entrance (well, the exit) of Garrison Hall on campus. This was the first (and probably the best) attempt I made on Thursday. I love the hint of detail on the windows. I need to work that more deeply whenever I photograph buildings this way. You can see the sky reflection if you look closely.

For this round of photos, I did 5-stop spreads (five photos, one stop apart). I don't know if that's enough. Or too much. And I don't yet know how the size of the stop really affects the final outcome. For all I know, I'm spinning my wheels because I've chosen to deal with too much data on my eye.

I seem to have a fetish for fire plugs. This is now the third that I've taken and added to my collection.



And, of course, we cannot forget to photograph the biggest balls of them all. I like the rusty bits. HDR really makes them pop out at you like a bad 3D b-movie.