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[slithead]

Why do so many people on Flicker find HDR photography "interesting". It is emphatically not. It's not dynamic either, just flat and monotonous. I doubt I could find a cheesier visual effect even if I had a complete archive of images posted to Geocities from 1997.

Comments

[komoriblue]

It was cool the first... maybe 30? times I saw it. Now I fucking hate it, except in extremely rare circumstances. I agree with everything you've said here.

[slithead]

I hated it from my first exposure to it, but admittedly it was for selfish reasons, because I was looking for a specific type of photo (an urban landscape taken at night from high up) to use as a desktop background and everything I found that was high enough resolution to be useful was fucking HDR. I like those kinds of scenes because of their inherent extreme contrast, but it seemed to be trendy to just eliminate it.

It almost makes me want to incorporate a lot of crushed blacks and blown-out highlights in my own photos out of reactionary spite. Almost.

[komoriblue]

It was trendy! I think I liked it at first because the first images I saw were also of a city at night (Tokyo, I believe), and it reminded me a lot of Akira. But then everyone started using it or everything! Photo of a city? HDR. Photo of my mom walking her dog? HDR. Photo of the hamburger I ate for lunch yesterday? HDR. Uuuuuugh.

Lisa sent me a file the other day, and was all excited about this 'awesome new filter' she had found online. I was pretty horrified when I opened it and it was an HDR photo from one of our weddings. I had a difficult time responding with a non bile-filled explanation of why I thought it wasn't such a good idea to use it.