While holding a camera, I imagine someone like Picasso holding a paint brush. I don’t imagine Picasso holding the paint brush creating a cubist work of art for the construction of a new building in his home town. The tool was used to create art and impact people through that art. Such art wasn’t set out to be a technique to follow so that the structural integrity of your new car was safe to drive. Why is the HDR technique looked at from a technical point of view in most photography circles. I believe this is why many photographers create initially poor images. I intend for this post to help you realize why a different approach can improve your images.

Artistic Experience

When you come to Nuwomb, you’re not arriving at a photography website for forensic photography. If you’re looking for the use of a technique to help you with forensic photography, you’ve come to the wrong place. Most of the High Dynamic Range photography you’ll find on Flickr isn’t being used to save the world with it’s technique. However, I do believe that we could still save the the world with HDR photography.

HDR isn’t a technique for me and I hope you do understand why. While I will try and do my best to explain and show everyone the way I end up creating my HDR photographs, I want to let it be known that I approach HDR photography with an artistic mindset.

High Dynamic Range imaging shouldn’t be looked at or approached as photography by numbers. Why not embrace your terrible initial attempts at this ‘newer’ form of photography? In my opinion HDR has become a mindset that says to bring out your artistic vision here. This helps translate every single photograph into an “HDR” even when I’m not using multiple exposures. It helps me realize that the term HDR is irrelevant because we don’t term every photograph entered into Photoshop a PS Photograph or PS Photography.

Constantly labeling our work as HDR, Macro, Lensbaby, Camera Phone, or whatever becomes photography based on technique or gear. I blame this on search engine optimization though. Some terms will never disappear because we want our websites to be found by people that search for that technique.

By approaching my photography as an artistic experience and not a technique, I embrace experimentation and mistakes. My most used combination of keys become Command + Z or Command + Option + Z. If you’re not sure what that means, they are the hot keys for Undo in Photoshop.

You can start out trying to follow a step by step technique for any type of photography; there’s no shortage of websites competing to get your eyes on their own HDR Tutorial. I encourage you to go beyond the technique into style and personal experimentation – both at the camera and post processing level.

As I move forward, I will try my best to not get into the technique used as I post or display the image artistically, within a portfolio, or on a photoblog. There will be other times to get into that kind of content for people – I’ve thought of sharing small and interesting tips I’ve learned with people through my newsletter. Consciously leaving out bits and pieces on the blog for those that really want all the goods.