HDR Art

Some software, particularly Photomatix, makes it pretty difficult to get real colours when tone-mapping HDRI to LDR (High Dynamic Range Images back to Low Dynamic Range). Most of the pictures I found as a result of my search for "HDR" in Picasa Web Albums, were such a kind of fantasy. I even saw so-called "fake HDR" or "pseudo HDR" images, the over-saturated photos with halos and other means of colour distortions, which had never been in the form of the real HDRI.
So I think I could be in the stream and make something people recognized as "true" HDR. That's it. This is a true HDRI, it has been made of three photos, and it has neither black nor white spots, the full dynamic range was squeezed to preserve all details.

HDRI again

More experiments with HDRI and search in the Internet led to discovery of another simple and convenient tool dealing with High Dynamic Range Images - Qtpfsgui. The result is amazing, on the above picture everything is visible, but look at this picture below, the brightest shot of three.


The sky is greatly overexposed, while the interior of the cave is still hidden in the dark shadow.

HDRI - Tawharanui park

This image is a combination of three ones. I put my camera on a tripod, set up auto-bracketing mode, and got three photos of the same rocks with different shutter speeds. Then I created a HDRI picture with 32 bit real values for each colour channel, and played with it trying to get visible both the pattern of white clouds on the sky and dark shadows on black volcanic rocks.

Then it was converted back to 8 bits per channel picture.

Tawharanui Regional Park

Low tide at Anchor Bay.


Exposed rocks.

Auckland CBD

A view from Princess Wharf to Auckland Downtown (Central Business District).

Queen Mary 2 at Auckland port

Just before leaving.

Karangahake Gorge

A view from old gold-mining facilities at Karangahake to State Highway 2 between Paeroa and Waihi.



The bridge on the tourist track. This picture was taken from the entrance of one gold mine.

Halloween