5 posts tagged “thoughts”
What? Would shouting FIRE have brought you here faster?
No?
Well, I heard somewhere that if a girl would have been subjected to rape and if she shouted at the top of her lungs "rape", nobody will come to her rescue, however, if she had shouted "FIRE!" she would find a lot who would have turned up to help.
So is the threat of fire more intense than rape?
Look at these images:
These are HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. If you don't know much about HDR, like yours truly, you might want to Google it and get completely swamped with technical jargon. But let me help you: these images originally contained information to the value of 32-bit, that 2 to the power of 32 which is a hell of a lot, per pixel!
Why do I emphasise originally? Becuase the resulting images cannot be displayed on normal monitors, and through my cursory examination of the HDR scene tonight, there are NO production monitors which could truly display them. Nor are there any printers which can print them. So the HDR images you see are no more than 16-bit representations after being compressed down by a program, which originally combined several images to produce the 32- or even 48-bit dynamic range in the photograph.
What's the point then of even considering HDR at the moment? Its proponents insist on a better resulting photograph as you can see details in both shadow and light. Judging by the best there is in Flickr's HDR pool, and one of its highly regarded people, as a photographer, I can't bring myself to really empathize with their processes. To me, HDR is a lazy way of setting up your shot, in post processing, rather than at the time of composition. That to me is fake, if the photographer insists on describing this process as done to get a "better picture". If however s/he describes the process as another creative avenue, then more power to him, as it is a medium worth exploring artistically.
I can't pass judgment on the medium yet though. My exposure to this method of photography to the millions of shots that my brother Jamal has taken, and him being so enamored with the result that I don't think he has taken a "normal" photograph since he discovered HDR. Click Click Click. You kind of recognize his approach not by the click of his shoes, but rather his camera's shutter which is always in triplicate.
So what is HDR then?
According to the veritable Wikipedea, it is:
In computer graphics and cinematography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows.
HDRI was originally developed for use with purely computer-generated images. Later, methods were developed to produce a HDR image from a set of photos taken with a range of exposures. With the rising popularity of digital cameras and easy to use desktop software, many amateur photographers have used HDRI methods to create photos of scenes with a high dynamic range (i.e a large difference between light and dark areas). However, HDRI has many other applications and "HDRI" should not be mistaken for just this use.
Ah, so HDR is really to try to represent a photograph in physical reality, as the eyes sees, that is. But with the absense of the ready availability of display or printing devices which can render those images in all their glory, we have to depend on applications which initially theoretically and mathematically goes the distance by combining variable exposured shots to 32- or 48-bits per pixel, and then a user must downgrade the resulting final image to 8- or 16-bits to be able to display his artistic abilities to the world. Defeats the purpose.
It does have merit though, in as far as being another artistic exposure to talent. Beyond that, I personally don't think there is any particular use to this new methodology.
That said, my own feeble attempts only started tonight after a discussion and a brief demonstration of the art with my brother Jamal after lunch today, with him showing off his behemoth 17-inch MacBook Pro which he acquired recently during his Malaysian holiday, that I started to appreciate what he was going on about for weeks. I asked him to explain to me the basics, and to show me how he acquires such images at the front-end, with his camera. He explained that his Canon 300 SLR has a function that automatically brackets the shot by under-, over- and normally exposing the image. That function resides in a menu on his camera called AEB. I of course insisted that that feature is not present on my trusty Canon 20D, though a degree higher than the 300, as I have never used it, I just naturally assumed that it was not available (I don't read manuals, I might add!) yet, he was insistant that my camera had that feature.
In any case, he went on to demonstrate to me how a series of pictures could be combined in order to produce a photograph with better dynamic range which should be more representative of the real world, and is more pleasing to the eye.
I have my reservations on the "pleasing" part and even with the "representative" one. Me being a traditional photographer much longer than me having a digital camera, I apply my long-standing training and methods to photography, regardless of whether I am using my old Nikon F3, Bronica GS1 or the digital Canon 20D. So I can't but cringe when I see photographs as those represented above. To me, they are really just computer generated images, rather than story tellers.
Look at any of Sam Javanrouh's pictures, here's an example:
and look at the dynamic range he has captured. As far as I can tell, and reading his forum and investigating his workflow, he does nothing really that a typical chemical photographer wouldn't do in his lab: dodging, burning, exposing, etc. The normal darkroom stuff, though Sam does that using Photoshop and his workflow typically is brightness and contrast and saturation adjustments, then sharpening using the Unsharp Filter. He seldom does anything else. But you must surely agree that his images carry within them some sort of magic, and inner sense, a depth, that I have not (yet) seen in the samples of those uploaded to the HDR group on Flickr.
Having said all of that, will I investigate this new medium? Of course I shall, especially that I have now located the manual, and Jamal was right, my 20D does have this capability as it describes it on page 84! However, I think I shall just continue with my traditional approach to photography, using Sam as an idol and guide in my humble efforts.
I've spent quite some time on Vox this morning and am having second thoughts about it now that I have spent a little time here. There is no doubt that the system is good and is easy to use, also, if any blog within the system proves popular, I don't have to bother upgrading servers, taking care of load balancing, down-times, or whatever. It's free. It's solid (so far). It's easy to use. And it's rather limiting!
Me, being used to complete control over my regular environment, I find it limiting that I couldn't just add a regular HTML link, rather than having to do it the easy way by clicking the tool in the Composure window. I know, I'm a masochist, but I like me some control. I'm sure I'll get used to this media, after all, what Vox gives me is the ability to just go ahead and create, rather than having to worry about bits and pieces.
Another thing: it doesn't like Safari and forces me to use FireFox which does not have a spelling checker installed yet! I'll have to get that fixed pronto... Oh hang on, there's a spelling checker tool available above the Composer window! Bugger!
Well, let's give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment.. just don't like having that control, obtuse as that may be, taken away from me.
While posting a comment on my main blog, I thought I would add a "funny picture" ridiculing the Arab League secretary general Amr Mousa and naturally my destination was Google. I looked at page after page of his images, and couldn't believe that I couldn't find one, just one, picture that he was off guard!
The conclusion? Every single picture is vetted before it is released, and the scrutineering is not done by the person in question, nor his press office, or even a government agency, it is done by the photographer or his editor. At leat this is the impression that I get.
Sad? No, not sad. It is completely pathetic!
Thanks to Hani for inviting me into this new personal publishing platform. Although I do have my own successful blog, I immediately liked what I saw when I visited Hani's blog... it seems this is build for the complete experience, rather than disperate module or services distributed through the web which could be painful to pull together into a single resource. Vox, so far, seems to have bridged that gap, and I'm happy to give it a whirl.
