Death to Sillhouettes (Mature content)

[daq7]

[daq7]

Oops I forgot to mark this mature content. Can the moderator fix that for me?

[daq7]

Ok, I did a remix on this. I was playing around with radiance format and setting the white balance in pshop before tone mapping. The color result was very different, so there is yet another variable to deal with. I did not like the result overall as much, but it did preserve the warmth of the chandelier which I really wanted. So I tone mapped it and remixed. This meant I had to manually align and rotate it which was a bit of a pain. But here it is:



Why "death to silhouettes?" (misspelled in the subject).

I find it interesting that a lot of people say they think HDR looks unnatural. I will admit that in the hands of a trained monkey like me it likely does. But honestly, how natural do silhouettes look. Not very in my opion. They eye does not work that way, so why should photography.

I think in about 5 to 10 years when image sensors will deliver up 10-15 ev on a single exposure, everyone will have an HDR pipeline to their finished product. Or most will anyway, because why would you settle for the current dynamic range limitations of imaging technology. Some will settle and maybe should, but most won't.

In this image I was trying to show these sculptures emerging from silhouettes with a difficult back light situation. It isn't even exactly what I wanted, but I am generally happy with how it turned out.

If I ever form an llc to sell photography, unlikely as it would cost more to incorporate than I would ever recoup in sales, I will call it "death to silhouttes" or maybe DTS so I don't scare off customers.

[Frog]

I do like the second edit better but can't tell you why.
I agree that the statues would not have looked good as silhouettes but I do see silhouettes on a regular basis in life and DO like them in photography. Sometimes the lack of detail reveals more than a lot of it.

[daq7]

Yeah frog i really dont disagree, but I think pure silhouttes are pretty rare are they not? The human eye is very good at optimizing local contrast. HDR software is beginning to mimic it a bit but is still probably primitive....

I don't dislike silhouettes as art, but I do think they are largely artificial.

[daq7]

Ok, I will spare you and not create a new thread, but here is my latest death to silhouettes experiment.



This time I did a typical HDR shoot, but I also hit it with the flash at the high end to make sure I had enough light to paint with in Pshop on the foreground. On the whole probably better than the first subject, but the color of the light between the wings is probably not right.