{"id":7478,"date":"2016-04-02T23:39:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T03:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7478"},"modified":"2017-04-20T11:50:38","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:50:38","slug":"overcooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7478","title":{"rendered":"Overcooked"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s wrong with this picture?<\/p>\n

Nothing, according to lots of people who saw it on the Facebook page of Robert Elzey<\/a>. They\u00a0called this and similar photos that he shot in a local garden “gorgeous” and “beautiful” and “vivid.”<\/p>\n

I’d call it overcooked.<\/p>\n

This was apparent\u00a0even to a non-photographer, who said, “I don’t like the color vivid like that!! It’s much better natural!”<\/p>\n

I piggybacked on her\u00a0comment and told Robert, who I only know from Facebook, that I also didn’t like it because the colors were oversaturated.<\/p>\n

He replied, “Lisa i appreciate your comment and Kathy’s but i have took 100s of thousands of normal pictures and i do still take a few normal pictures but now i am into Bracketing and High Dynamic Range Photography. I know my style will change as i gone along but i am sure i will stay with HDR on most of my shots.”<\/p>\n

He is referring to the photographic technique of taking the same scene at different exposures<\/a> – some exposed to capture the shadows, some exposed to capture highlights – and combining them into a single photo. This involves the use of software that does tone mapping<\/a> to match the colors.<\/p>\n

Users have a choice in how they adjust\u00a0the sliders in the software that they use to merge the photos into one. If a little saturation and contrast and sharpening is good, a lot will be great, right?<\/p>\n

And then it becomes self-perpetuating. People looking to “do HDR” think that their shots should look as “vibrant” as all the other overcooked\u00a0HDR that they’ve seen published.<\/p>\n

Besides which – people really DO like this overblown look. I have to wonder why. Are we so overstimulated that everything has to look hyperactive just to get our attention?<\/p>\n

There are countless\u00a0examples of good photos\u00a0ruined by overzealous HDR.<\/a>\u00a0You probably\u00a0have noticed this trend in photography even if you’re not a photographer. The photos look like every colored hair is standing on end.<\/p>\n

While cameras in the not-so-distant past were only able to capture a portion of this range in a single shot, now even a phone camera has a built-in HDR function. Generally, though, that function doesn’t do the horrible extremes that bracketing and tone-mapped merges produce.<\/p>\n

\"iphone
iphone HDR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The technique doesn’t have to turn out this way, which is what I was trying to get across to Robert. It can be captivating for its realism.<\/p>\n

HDR is intended to mimic how our eyes see light and color by bringing together a wide range of exposures into a single image. It was attempted as early as the 1850s by Gustave La Gray, who combined two negatives to make this image:<\/p>\n

\"Gustave_Le_Gray_-_Brig_upon_the_Water_-_Google_Art_Project\"
Brig Upon the Water<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ansel Adams refined this art in his marvelous landscapes using the Zone System.<\/a><\/p>\n

Both were cases of art imitating life.<\/p>\n

Our eyes\u00a0miraculously adjust our perception to see details in both highlights and shadows, all in one sweep. This dynamic perception is the equivalent of 20 f-stops on a camera lens – but a camera\u00a0has, at most, 14 f-stops.<\/p>\n

HDR is useful for bringing out those subtle sparkles of light and the depth and dimension of shadows. Here is one I captured and merged as HDR in Booger Hollow, 2011:<\/p>\n

\"_IGP8301HDR\"
Lance Creek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even this seems overdone to me now, and too “HDR” – but it does give some\u00a0sense of depth and lushness as\u00a0I wanted. The colors are fairly realistic.<\/p>\n

I’m definitely not a purist, but for me, the aim of HDR should be to recreate the feeling of a place. Not send the viewer on an acid trip.<\/p>\n

Opinions on this are not unanimous, as this forum on “EarthPorn”<\/a>\u00a0shows.<\/p>\n

Some photographers believe that “Touched up photos are like good makeup, you really shouldn’t be able to notice it.”<\/p>\n

Others, from the same forum, take the line that “It’s art. I hate the notion that there’s a “right” way to do anything. There is definitely room for more heavily retouched photos. You don’t have to like it, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”<\/p>\n

If it’s a deliberate artistic choice, that’s one thing. But I think we have grown desensitized by oversaturated photos, and now photographers and viewers think those photos are just “prettier.”<\/p>\n

This may be related to\u00a0the way Americans have come to consume such huge amounts of sugar.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2005. That’s the year Adobe added HDR features to Photoshop.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, according to lots of people who saw it on the Facebook page of Robert Elzey. They\u00a0called this and similar photos that he shot in a local garden “gorgeous” and “beautiful” and “vivid.” I’d call it overcooked. This was apparent\u00a0even to a non-photographer, who said, “I don’t like the color … read more Overcooked<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[16,35,82,355,850,156,851,852],"class_list":["post-7478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","tag-16","tag-art","tag-beauty","tag-color","tag-hdr","tag-photography","tag-saturation","tag-technique"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7478"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7484,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7478\/revisions\/7484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}