HDR as fine art?

It still seems most fine art photographers have yet to embrace HDR. Do you think they will? Is HDR the

next "digital?" Will we ever see HDR in a gallery? (Or maybe you have, and I've just missed it.)

If a crucifix in urine or a pile of bricks is art, I don't see the problem with an HDR image.

 

I once saw an exhibition at MOMA which was a pile of wrapped candy. Visitors were invited to take a piece and so

contribute the the evolution of the piece. It was quite tasty.

 

I'm waiting for an HDR image of elvis printed on velvet.

My personal opinion is I like most HDR (not urine-soaked crucifixes), but I haven't seen the landscape masters embrace it. Wondering if anyone had some feedback.

I am sure it will be around, in galleries and magazines. I don't care for it myself but it seems to be increasing in popularity.

photocamel has an HDR forum.

 

http://photocamel.com/forum/hdr-photography/

I think it has a place, but toes the line between fake and ultra-real. Easy to cross into the fake section.

The next-to-most-recent issue of LensWork (#76) has a portfolio of B&W images all done in HDR on a 5D. The bloke (Jim Laurence, www.northstarpictures.com) has his workflow down and just does it, image after image after image. No big deal, it's just the look he wants. (Although this particular work doesn't seem to be on his web site.) It's wonderful stuff.

HDR? ....Anything can be fine art.

 

And sometimes it already is. Try here...

 

http://www.hdrlabs.com/news/index.php?id=6554992781381641327

Would it be fair to say that it's just another software tool; as good a candidate for producing fine art as anything else? or put another way, it's the artist that produces the art not the software. Some fine art looks for realism and some explores the abstract, and all points in between; HDR can be an ingredient at both ends of the scale.

 

I bet that if/when they invent the camera that captures HDR in a single shot then it will be adopted in two shakes of a lambs tail and the techniques we are using now will be confined to specialist forums of purists and lovers of historical techniques!

 

HDR is here to stay and will, no doubt at all, contribute to much fine art work (and a lot of rubbish as well!) ... as an additional note I find it sad, if predictable, that there seems to be stigma attached to this new technique; I bet various 'fine artists' are slow to admit using it for fear that it might diminish the credibility of their protfolios.

I'm sure you already have seen HDR photos hanging in galleries, you just haven't recognized it as HDR. Not all HDR has to have that pop tone mapped to the extreme look. I'm seeing many landscape photographers using multiple exposures and HDR software to replace the split ND filters they used to carry and the contrast masks they used to use in the darkroom. Their photographs look quite natural until you really start thinking about how the scene lighting might cause problems for a single exposure.

Matt beat me to it. How do you know it isn't widely used already?

Matt took the words out of my mouth.

 

When I get home, I'll try to dig up some examples of "natural" or at least "non-fantasy" looking HDR to post.

No technique or tool makes anything art, or fine or course for that matter. It's all down to the mind and hands of the person applying the tools or techniques they choose to employ.

Ellis has it right--it's not the tool, it's the tool behind the tool.<p>"How do you know it isn't widely used already?" (Emre Safak et. al.)<p>It is--has been for centuries--but the instrument has been the artist's eye rather than a camera. Every scene you see is composed of multiple exposures on your fovea stitched together in the visual cortex, and the impossible range of detail you see in most representational paintings is an effort to approximate that with quite outrageous fudging of the sensitometric curve and enhancement of local detail.<p>We don't complain about the perceptual games painters play with us because we're used to them, but once the same tricks become possible with the tonal values of photographs, some of us will become enamored of them and apply them in an unselective way, and the rest will set up a howl. So no, HDR has no possibility of ever becoming fine art _if_ no photographers are fine artists--but conversely, fine art is indeed HDR.

Even better "it's not the tool, it's the fool behind the tool." :-)

Not exactly proud of this image itself, but rather proud of the "natural" looking HDR.<div></div>

HDR is just another tool, something becoming art depends on the context and intent as much as the materials.

High Dynamic Range Imaging was originally developed in the 1930s and 1940s by Charles Wyckoff. Wyckoff's detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the early 1940s. It is not a new thing to embrace.

 

How about this HDR. Really nice. It is created with Essential HDR software.

Walt would have loved them.

<p>No question HDR will appear in galleries, and undoubtedly has already.<br>

Keep in mind that HDR is not a style but an application of technology.<br>

Most HDR images so far are <a href="http://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10161&artistFilterInitial=X"><em>Pictorialist</em> </a> landscapes -- regardless of what the maker thought she was doing. One reason: because landscape scenes almost universally have 8- to 10-stop luminance ranges between the sky and the grounded detail. Photography has always had trouble with this because film typically maxes out at a 5-stop range, give or take (same for the digital sensor). The film solution was the graduated neutral-density filter, pioneered by Galen Rowell (National Geographic). It wasn't bad, and now we use Photoshop and other software tools to give even more flexibility.<br>

Art-proper, such as it is, dealt with Pictorialism about 100 years ago.<br>

It is obvious that HDR would not bar an image from consideration; but it is not a license for. That always depends upon the quality of expression.</p>