Dave K

If I may add my wee thoughts here, your argument is valid to a point. It's the same argument people once used about abstractionism, pointilism, impressionism, pop art, Warhol, Picasso, Pollock, and a plethora of other movements in the "traditional" art world. Each was decried as being the death of art and should be immediately burned and its practioners at least flogged if not put to death.

C'mon! Get a grip. Art, of any kind, is in the eye of the beholder and the creator of that piece. I can wad a piece of paper up and toss it onto the floor and say it's art, and, you know what? It IS art. Art is defined by the artist and only acknowledged by the viewer.

You know, I, too, look through the threads just like you do. If I see something I'm not interested in - such as all the Canon vs. Nikon garbage or "what lens should I buy?" - I just don't open them. If, on the other hand, I see something in which I think I might be interested, I'll open it and begin reading. I assure you I'm smart enough to decide within a sentence or three if it's something of any real interest to me and, if not, I simply return to the digest and move on to the next thread.

I assure you I'm probably every bit as busy as you, but I am also quite capable of deciding what to read and what to ignore. I don't need a nanny to make those decisions for me.

Besides, I'll sometimes find something in a particular thread that catches my interest, after all. Reading about new techniques, y'see, is how we learn and grow as photographers and as artists.

Don't we already have far too many people making decisions for us? Are we now incapable of thinking for ourselves? How about doing this: how about accepting responsibility for yourself and making your own decisions?

Dave K

HEART Loc: God's Country - COLORADO

Had to weigh in. Usually never post photos - I do mostly HDR for private enjoyment. Tons of it. I love it. Period. Last year, in Africa, the attached were taken, among thousands on that particular trip. The originals would be unrecognizable, but these HDR's (from cropped and edited shots) made me enjoy looking at them, and the memories. My family wants me to do nothing but. It's just fun. I don't solicite comment - just enjoy, or not. I'm a huge fan of this site, my fellow Hogs, and love photography - wherever that leads. I encourage others. Thanks for what you do, Dreamer. Keep encouraging others. And question.

ELEPHANT HIDDEN IN THE BUSH - AFRICA '11


GIRAFFE BUTT - AFRICA '11


LION IN THE ROUGH - AFRICA - '11

bull drink water Loc: pontiac mi.

only fellow photogs dwelt on how he did it,the masses just said WOW.

mtbearded1 Loc: U.S.A. : Montana : Missoula

In the seven years I've had my digital cameras, I've tried HDR on a few (very few) occasions. That's with over 34,000 images taken in the seven years. For the most part, I agree that the images I see on various fora marked HDR are overdone, stylized within an inch of their life, and rather cartoonish. That said, I ran into one situation where HDR was exactly what I needed to get the image I wanted. I was photographing the Natural Pier Bridge across the Clark Fork River near Alberton, Montana. The bridge spans the river with steep canyon walls behind it, and, of course, the time of day had me shooting into the sun. I took three separate exposures and merged them in Photoshop to come up with an image that both pleased me and allowed for a balance between the bright sky and the dark canyon walls.

Natural Pier Bridge, Alberton, Montana--an exercise in HDR

YAllen

HDR works with certain photos, it does not work on anything & everything, if you shoot high rise buildings with water/river at night you can really get a very nice effect, You can't use it on closeup headshot.

neil43

The point of HDR is to take photos of scenes that have a high dynamic range, something a portrait would not normally have.

randym77

I think one reason HDR is so popular is that for awhile at least, the big drawback for digital photography was a more limited dynamic range than film. (I don't know if this is still true; technology is improving so quickly it's hard to keep up.) HDR was a way to address that problem.

I'd guess that most of the really nice digital landscape photos you see have a little HDR. With a subtle touch, you won't even know it's HDR.

I'd guess that in the long run, we'll see more and more digital special effects, just because technology is making it easier. For now, though, I don't think you have worry about Orton taking over the forum. It's a fad. People found a new toy and are playing with it. They'll find a new toy and move on soon.

Mudshark Loc: Illinois

I don't like to speak on subjects I don't really know...BUT...it seems to me HDR is useful in certain images and I suspect that the people who start down this path just keep looking around the next corner...just taking it a little step further and then...another little step further and most of what I see...well...I think they should have stopped in Cleveland and they've taken it all the way to London...sometimes...Paris.

randym77

Sometimes. But sometime's it's just that they have different goals.

HDR can actually make your photos more realistic. The human eye has a wider dynamic range than a digital camera, so HDR can make a scene look more like the way we see it.

Too much looks unrealistic, but a lot of people like that. Why photograph in black and white, or infrared? It's certainly not "realistic."

FWIW, the software sold to do HDR usually lets you choose: subtle, realistic, artistic, fantastic, etc.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

This is a quickie HDR I just did. I combined four images using Photomatix. The one I'm showing here is fusion default, one of about a dozen choices.

DougW Loc: SoCal

wow! That opened a can of worms! 6 whole pages of snark.

neil43

Surely not all snark.

RMM Loc: Suburban New York

Wow. I'm not even half-way through this thread, and I can't wait to get out of it.

I think there's a problem here. When I joined UHH, there were two main sections. Now I'm losing count. There's Main Photography Discussion. There's Photo Gallery (just display and admire), and Photo Analysis (display, admire, alter, argue). And now we have People Photography and True Macro-Photography. Plus General Chit-Chat, Links and Resources and Members Buy/Sell/Trade.

I can live with General Chit-Chat as a forum of people who have gotten familiar with each other, and who want to talk about issues not related to photography. Buy/sell/trade is a sensible, specialized area. But how many separate sections do we need? I've already just about given up on the two newest sections, although I'd be more likely to pay attention if they appeared in the Photo Gallery or Photo Analysis sections.

I do agree that many of the subject lines are way too uninformative. Getting people to be more specific in labeling their posts would be far more helpful, as far as I'm concerned, than turning UHH into the equivalent of a big box drugstore where you need a map to find the aisle with the toothpaste.

DougW Loc: SoCal

Thats true' but sometimes i think Thumper had i right

JPM

If you've never seen HDR done right, check out this website.
http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/