HDR: The Supermodels of the Photography World.

4. July 2008 by admin.

I am an abstract artist and an amateur photographer.  What little spare time I have that I don’t spend with the family or playing tennis, I spend trying to create aesthetically pleasing images.  So, one of the things that fascinates me is how we perceive the world, and what we will accept as representations of the world–in other words, how abstracted does something have to be before we no longer consider it a realistic representation?

For instance, there is a new(ish) trend in digital photography, called "HDR", for "high dynamic range" imaging.  You can read a wikipedia entry about it here.

If you’re not familiar with HDR, the idea is that in a situation where you are photographing a subject that has a broad range of highlights and shadows, the camera can’t provide detail for all the lights and darks via one exposure. Therefore, you shoot 3-5 photographs, varying the "EV" or ‘Exposure Value’ from one image to the next slightly up or down, so that, ultimately, you get 3-5 photos of the same composition, each covering a different slice of the available light and dark areas.  You then take the images and combine them using special software, and wind up having all the details preserved both for the brightest and darkest areas of the image.

The point I’m making by bringing this up, is that while the human eye is better at resolving lots of gradations of light and dark than the sensors are in Digital SLRs, these HDR images seem too rich and too dynamic compared to what I see with my naked eyes.  They seem, in a way, more real than reality, the supermodels, if you will, of photography.  Which leads me back, perhaps circuitously, to my point: what is the line between what our brains accept as being representations of reality and what we reject?  In the case of HDR, it seems as though the images represent the way reality ought to look if it had any sense.  When I look at black and white, I have no problem accepting these images as reality, even though I know on some intellectual level that I don’t see the world that way.  When I look at images of people frozen in mid-air (gymnasts, long jumpers, football players) I have no problem accepting those as reality, even though in real life, you can’t freeze time and space the way the shutter on a camera can. 

So, in my book, HDR images, when they’re done well, are amazing to look at.  But, to me, they’re idealizations of reality rather than representations of reality.   

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