HDR: Hard Day's Riding!

[chunshine]

Great capture and the HDR works for me. Look forward to your next batch

 

[ChrisP]

Really like this !! Nice one ! I think in this case that the HDR has actually added to the mood of the scene. Nice contrasty look to it.

Hope to be out taking some pics of some guys doing "Street Trials" riding in the next couple of weeks.

If I get something half as good as this I'll be happy.

Chris.

 

[oldfart]

i like pic its nice capture. If your on flickr check for strobists theres lot of guys doing this with also with skateboarders

 

[MrSix]

i like pic its nice capture. If your on flickr check for strobists theres lot of guys doing this with also with skateboarders

I've just come back from Dubai where I went to one of David Hobby's lectures and chilled with him and others in the bar afterwards (not that I'm name dropping! ). So I'm very aware of the strobist scene.

(Off topic, but I'm Adam, the "12 year old" in this post - http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/05/light-fare-at-bar.html)

If you check my flickr stream you'll see I do shoot with strobes usually. It was too windy and busy at the park to set them up on stands though, which is why I shot natural light and thought I'd try HDR.

Here's an example of a shot of Phil lit with strobes:

 

[smithphoto]

Love the pic! Just one question....... If the shot is made up of 7 jpegs, I presume you must have shot at about 7 frames a second? How come there is no bike movement even using strobe? Please share!!

 

[Albedo]

The original is a good capture, the HDR is incredibly striking! Well played!

 

[MrSix]

Love the pic! Just one question....... If the shot is made up of 7 jpegs, I presume you must have shot at about 7 frames a second? How come there is no bike movement even using strobe? Please share!!

Certainly.

This HDR is made from 7 jpegs, but only 1 RAW image.
The 7 JPEGS were created in Lightroom by underexposing the original RAW by 3, 2 and 1 stops then over exposing it by 1, 2 and 3 stops. These six, plus the original "correctly" exposed jpg made it 7. I then combined these in Photomatix Pro and tonemapped them to give equal levels of exposure throughout the image. I then took that single tonemapped JPEG and using curves and layer masks, I selectively processed parts of the image to achieve the final look.

Hope that explains it

 

[smithphoto]

Great stuff. Thanks! And thanks for sharing with us. It's one of those pics that makes me want to crab the camera and try a few shots myself. Inspirational!

 

[MrSix]

No problemo

If you're interested in what I do then sign up to my blog:
www.adamswords.co.uk/blog

I'm in the process of writing a post about light painting with strobes, should be up this evening.

 

[howell80]

The hdr shot is packed full of life. Hdr can be overused but i feel that its been used well here not the usual landscape shot but something slightly different. I cant stop scrolling back upto it it to compair the two you have posted. Its a top image imo not just for the trick but the people watching in the background and also the two other bikes on the track.
Cant wait to see some more

 

[Charlie C]

MrSix how do u get to taking bmx photos? i'd love the get in to taking photos of bmxing and skating (use to bmx myself). Do you contact a group of riders? or do u just turn up at a skate park...?

 

[MrSix]

I'm best mates with one of the Identit Bikes sponsored riders and I'm really good friends with a large number of others.
The majority of my shots are of Phil (Auckland) because that's who I ride with. Whenever he goes out riding he'll give me a call and I go with him. He even has my business cards in his spokes

 

[joxby]

I like it as a picture, I don't like the enormous departure from the original.
Props for posting the original, I'm not sure everyone would, given the distance between "A" and "B".
The scene just doesn't exist, there is no sunset, there is no grungy black concrete ramps and no dark shading, except for the key elements, it's a manufactured scene.
Fine as a picture, I dunno about a photograph.
That aside, its a great capture, I think the negatives are the line of sight, there's little contrast between the biker and that tree line/hills...unfortunate.
And the cars/carpark are a bit of an eyesore.
I think your thoughts on pursuing this genre of photography with flash will yield more satisfying results

 

[petemc]

The scene just doesn't exist, there is no sunset, there is no grungy black concrete ramps and no dark shading, except for the key elements, it's a manufactured scene.

I have a feeling the sunset did exist just that the camera metered for the rider so its over-exposed the sunset, which he brought back in RAW. Here's an example of mine, similar setting.

Left is what I shot. I got the settings so wrong. The right is what I ended up with simply by adjusting the image in RAW. No Photoshopping, just RAW. I dropped the exposure down by 2.5 stops, increased the blacks and adjusted the shadows. So by your logic the clouds weren't there in my shot, except they were. Its just the way the camera metered the exposure. RAW captures a serious amount of data.

 

[MrSix]

The scene just doesn't exist, there is no sunset, there is no grungy black concrete ramps and no dark shading, except for the key elements, it's a manufactured scene.

But you are wrong, the scene does exist.
HRD isn't magic, it's simply a process which allows you to capture a dynamic range far greater than is possible with one exposure from a modern digital camera.

Fine as a picture, I dunno about a photograph.

I was in the same boat as you once upon a time, I had to decide whether I counted HDR images as photographs or as photomontages. The truth is that they are both. There's no lies in what you see there, I've not cloned anything and I've not made anything up. I would say your argument is more with my post processing style in photoshop than the actual generation of the HDR itself. The gritty textures ramps come from selective curve adjustment in photoshop, not from tone mapping.

That aside, its a great capture, I think the negatives are the line of sight, there's little contrast between the biker and that tree line/hills...unfortunate.

I agree. As I said in a previous post, this shot was merely a quick snap as Phil rode past me - it wasn't staged or even pre-meditated, I just pointed and clicked as he came past. That's what has shocked me so much about the response I've recieved from it and I'm going to call it a "happy accident" and see if I can progress the style

I think your thoughts on pursuing this genre of photography with flash will yield more satisfying results

Fingers crossed eh?!

 

[joxby]

I have a feeling the sunset did exist just that the camera metered for the rider so its over-exposed the sunset, which he brought back in RAW. Here's an example of mine, similar setting.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't,:shrug: to the left bottom of that pylon I see a little orange in the original, likely as not it was more pronounced than that, even though the camera employed matrix metering across the whole scene, it didn't expose for just the rider, if it had the rider would be better exposed and the sky would contain even less detail in the original.
You'd almost have a case if the rider was spot metered.
Anyway, this isn't a HDR or not HDR thread, I defend your right to be of the opinion that the HDR pic looks right, and mine to say it doesn't.

But you are wrong, the scene does exist.


I was in the same boat as you once upon a time, I had to decide whether I counted HDR images as photographs or as photomontages.

I'm not gonna get drawn into this, it can only end in disagreement
Not ALL HDR images are photomontages, its just an adjustment like everything else that gets overdone imo.
If you think it looks right, that's good enough for me, don't feel obliged to justify it to anybody, its all about opinions

 

[dod]

I think the HDR treatment works here MrSix, was a good capture to start with and the processing suits the environment

RAW captures a serious amount of data.

Sorry for going OT but that's about the best argument I've seen to shoot RAW.

 

[Little Man]

Wow, awesome photo. Well captured, tried shooting a bit of BMX'ing myself so i know it can be tricky.

 

[ekimeno]

Yup - love the HDR version. Great shot and would recommend for photo competition.

 

[specialman]

Good HDRing but there's not enough of the bike for my liking. Good skills though...

... don't think I could do that on my Raleigh Shopper!!!

 

[Steve Henderson]

Outstanding ! It makes you look at it and study the photo.

Your comment is right..it makes the origional look boring.

One of the best photos Ive seen for a while.

Whatever you did it worked 100%

I love it.

Steve

 

[wingnut]

It's a great image enhanced by the post pro work, but I feel it is only the tonemapping that makes it.
Just to point out that it is my understanding that this isn't a HDR image, it is a tonemapped version of an LDR image. I myself have been pulled up on calling an LDR image who's exposure has been tweaked in Lightroom or similar then tonemapped through photomatrix, a HDR image. Sorry mate as good as shot as it is this is not an HDR image.
There should be a new name for that process called FHDR, False or Fake High Dynamic Range
An HDR is an image in which you have captured a real-life scene which has a brightness range beyond the abilities of your camera and compressed that range in order to fit it into the range of a single photo. It can only be done by blending multiple camera exposures. Simply pushing the "Exposure" slider around on a RAW converter does not increase the capture range of your photo. The computer cannot create data that you did not capture. The final HDR image should have fully articulated detail in both the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows. It's very successful as a brightly colored and visually striking example of computer generated poster art, and that is fine, but it is not an HDR photo, and the sooner people stop calling images of this kind HDR the better. For true HDR image then check out the group's on Flickr for some stunning examples of true HDR imagery or over here on POTN

 

[specialman]

HDR seems to have turned into a buzz word and I can forgive people for calling their shots HDR even if technically they're not HDR. If the title of the shot was 'a cat' and it turned out to be a photograph of a dog, I'd feel a bit short changed. But if it's called 'HDR BMX' and it shows a BMXer in a HDR-style, then I'm not going to argue the toss. Theere are too many know-it-alls on this site who want to pick the bones out of everything...

I've done cross-processd shots on film and replcated the look using digital – they look the same but you can't technically cross process a digital file. However, that look is what I'm going for but why try to confuse matters and call it something else?

The HDR effect looks a certain way so let's leave it at that unless we're talking actual specifics such as technique, and then the difference between HDR and LDR are then truly clear.

Anyway, as I've said before, HDR is becoming a get-out clause for many photographers who take too many crap shots. The OP's shot is decent and it does benefit from the HDR-style effect, that's plain to see, and it adds to grittiness of an urban sport. But, and it's a big but, there seems to be a lot of folk who think just by applying HDR-style effects to their shots, means they've taken a good shot. Something about polishing a turd is the saying for this...

 

[Pricer]

I thort HDR recuired slow shutter speeds. How exactly did you make this master peice?

I cant get enough of it. Blows me away everytime i see it.

Wicked Pic

 

[Steve Henderson]

Is it not HDR ?
The lad says he used Photomatix Pro !
I have not looked at this software until now but when you download it and run it and run it it definitely has a button right there that says
"Generate a HDR Image" it apparently generates 32-bit HDR images ?

The site you down load the software from is also called hdr soft . com

So unless the software programmers are making a false statement and the software does not generate 32-bit HDR images it has to be..

Not starting an argument in the least...Just in this case I can not work it out !

To be honest like I say...This is one of the best photo's I have ever seen period. And whatever method he used to develop the image worked 100% and if the word HDR is used in the title so be it.
Maybe THIS SITE needs contacting and telling that the software they sell does not produce HDR images..??
By the way I have just played about with this software and to be honest its damn good fun and quite effective IMO.

 

[petemc]

Its not HDR because a HDR image can only be stored inside a 32bit file. You convert to HDR, and then tone map back to an LDR so you can actually see it because your display won't have a high enough contrast ratio to display it. Basically it was HDR at one point.

 

[wingnut]

Maybe THIS SITE needs contacting and telling that the software they sell does not produce HDR images..??
By the way I have just played about with this software and to be honest its damn good fun and quite effective IMO.

Regards Steve

No their software does produce HDR images it is how you get there that matters.
Taking one single image, tweaking it in lightroom to make 3 or 5 different versions of it with different exposures, then running it through Photomatirx or whatever is not HDR imagery but fake hdr with tonemapping. A true HDR image is made up of 3,5,7 or 9 different images each taken with different exposures. When you see the two side by side you will understand.
Too many magazines are pushing this "HDR" technique to make sales, yes it looks good and does pull things from the original image, but sometimes the tone mapping can be over done and make a decent image look very cartoony. Check out the true HDR groups on Flickr or POTN and see the difference.

Also check out the wikipedia entry for HDR

In image processing, computer graphics and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

High Dynamic Range Imaging was originally developed in the 1930s and 1940s by Charles Wyckoff. Wyckoff's detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the early 1940s. The process of tone mapping together with bracketed exposures of normal digital images, giving the end result a high, often exaggerated dynamic range, was first reported in 1993[1], and resulted in a mathematical theory of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter that was published in 1995[2]. In 1997 this technique of combining several differently exposed images to produce a single HDR image was presented to the computer graphics community by Paul Debevec.

This method was developed to produce a high dynamic range image from a set of photographs taken with a range of exposures. With the rising popularity of digital cameras and easy-to-use desktop software, the term "HDR" is now popularly used[3] to refer to this process. This composite technique is different from (and may be of lesser or greater quality than) the production of an image from a single exposure of a sensor that has a native high dynamic range. Tone mapping is also used to display HDR images on devices with a low native dynamic range, such as a computer screen.

Hope that helps.

To end, i would like to add that yes the op's image is a good one, and my hat is dothed for a stunning image and great capture. It's just that it isn't a true HDR image. Sorry.

 

[oli]

very interesting read for someone unfamilar with the whole tog thing.

I really like the original image, the modifed version (hdr/ldr/fhdr call it waht you like) and all the comments and insights. Looks like I will be taking images in raw for decent purpose shots.

thanks for the insights and the Mr6 for the original post