June Critique

PLEASE REMEMBER: Parking has been provided in The Village underground parking structure—DO NOT PARK IN THE LOT LOCATED ON CORBIN, THAT IS FOR VISITORS AND EMERGENCY VEHICLES. Take Prairie Street east off Corbin. Turn in the 2nd driveway on the right and follow the road around the backside of the facility until you see the parking entrance. You can park in any non-reserved parking space (most of these are against the walls). Take the elevator to the 1st floor. We meet in the Northridge Room, which is next to their Arts and Craft Room. There will be F/Stop members floating around to help you find your way.

Our assignment for June is HDR photography and our judge for the critique will be Hutch Hutchinson.

The following is a write up by Hutch on the subject:

High Dynamic Range (HDR)
by Hutch Hutchison

Dynamic Range in photography is the luminance of an image, or ratio of highlights to shadows. The human eye perceives a much greater range than any film or digital cameras to date. High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques are all about how photographers deal with the limits of their camera's ability to capture the full range of the scene.

Some folks believe that "HDR" techniques are relatively new to photography. In fact, combining multiple exposures to fix the extremes of a scene date back to the 1850's when Gustave Le Gray combined two differently exposed negatives to create a positive image.

In the mid 20th century manual dodging and burning an image in the darkroom was used to increase or decrease exposure within regions of an image to yield better tonality. Ansel Adams elevated dodging and burning to an art form and wrote a comprehensive book called "The Print" featuring these techniques in the context of his Zone System.

The advent of color film meant that dodging and burning was no longer possible and HDR was for the most part limited to the production of better film and techniques used in the film industry.

The advent of digital cameras created a new demand and possibilities for getting greater dynamic range by combining multiple images using a variety of methods. There is specific specialty software or a photographer might "double process" an image using layer and masking techniques. Most post processing software such as Photoshop also offers simulations of traditional dodging and burning.

Today finished HDR images can be so subtle as to almost leave the technique unrecognizable in an image, other than being closer to how the scene may have appeared to the human eye. Or, HDR images are sometimes taken to an extreme beyond reality creating a totally new art form.

In presenting an HDR image in competition or for critique it is not enough to just present a colorful or extremely manipulated photo. The maker must still keep in mind the elements of a good image: impact, composition, center of interest, creativity, story telling and overall technique.

Hutch's contact information is:
Geo. "Hutch" Hutchinson(805) 390-5371
hutch@digitaldaydreaming.com
http://www.digitaldaydreaming.com (http://www.digitaldaydreaming.com/)