Leuven in Belgium (HDR in here, run away if you no likey)
Discussion
Some shots from a walkabout I did in Leuven on Wednesday evening - great red/blue skies after sunset making for some nice backgrounds to the awesome architecture on display.
Didn't want to whack these all up in the random photo thread, so thought it would make life easier for the non-HDR posse to put them in one of their own
A short walk from the Hotel Binnenhof where I was staying all week, on route to the city centre...
In the pedestrian area behind the Ratthaus (town hall) you're spoilt for choice as far as pubs and restaurants go...
Plenty of neon lights to be found, it would have been rude not to capture some of them on my wander around...
There's few places I've been on my travels with work that have placed me in a city with so many cool buildings and old architecture in abundance - you could shoot pictures of practically every second building you passed by...
The ratthaus itself has so much detail in the figurines which literally fill the entire outer walls of the building (shot just at sunset, hence the intense blue sky behind)...
One of the many sculptures to be found around the city, of some dudes in a balloon - I've yet to look into the significance of it being there, but cool none the less...
The huge cobbled market square is a perfect spot to capture another of the city's huge gothic style buildings...
...and even better to take a walk past later at night too, as by then the arches will all be lit up with different coloured lights...
Back near the hotel I was staying at you're within a few hundred metres walk of the main train station in the city, and another huge cobbled square with funky buildings all around (with a small travelling fair using the space to leave loads of their trailers etc and having their fairground rides all set up directly in front of the station itself)...
And just off to the side of the train station is the KBC building which is lit up at night with blue neons inside and other lighting outside to highlight the different areas of the building...
There's more pics to come as I've not got round to reworking them all and uploading to Flickr, should have another 15 or so added to my Leuven set over the weekend, set can be found at the following link:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barryoneilphotography...
Didn't want to whack these all up in the random photo thread, so thought it would make life easier for the non-HDR posse to put them in one of their own
A short walk from the Hotel Binnenhof where I was staying all week, on route to the city centre...
In the pedestrian area behind the Ratthaus (town hall) you're spoilt for choice as far as pubs and restaurants go...
Plenty of neon lights to be found, it would have been rude not to capture some of them on my wander around...
There's few places I've been on my travels with work that have placed me in a city with so many cool buildings and old architecture in abundance - you could shoot pictures of practically every second building you passed by...
The ratthaus itself has so much detail in the figurines which literally fill the entire outer walls of the building (shot just at sunset, hence the intense blue sky behind)...
One of the many sculptures to be found around the city, of some dudes in a balloon - I've yet to look into the significance of it being there, but cool none the less...
The huge cobbled market square is a perfect spot to capture another of the city's huge gothic style buildings...
...and even better to take a walk past later at night too, as by then the arches will all be lit up with different coloured lights...
Back near the hotel I was staying at you're within a few hundred metres walk of the main train station in the city, and another huge cobbled square with funky buildings all around (with a small travelling fair using the space to leave loads of their trailers etc and having their fairground rides all set up directly in front of the station itself)...
And just off to the side of the train station is the KBC building which is lit up at night with blue neons inside and other lighting outside to highlight the different areas of the building...
There's more pics to come as I've not got round to reworking them all and uploading to Flickr, should have another 15 or so added to my Leuven set over the weekend, set can be found at the following link:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barryoneilphotography...
And before anyone comments on the colours in these - these are tone mapped with saturation at 45%!!!
The vivid colours are all down to the Sony R1 bridge cam I used to shoot them all - the colours you can pull out with this cam are out of this world compared to either of my full SLR's...
The vivid colours are all down to the Sony R1 bridge cam I used to shoot them all - the colours you can pull out with this cam are out of this world compared to either of my full SLR's...
VxDuncan said:
I see you went for the subtle approach to the HDR 
WHY do people think fake-coloured clouds look good in a photo?!? The more subtle pics there work pretty nicely, but then you get some which look like Andy Warhol has puked over the photo. And no, it's not art. It's over-use of technology to achieve a crap effect.
havoc said:
VxDuncan said:
I see you went for the subtle approach to the HDR
WHY do people think fake-coloured clouds look good in a photo?!? The more subtle pics there work pretty nicely, but then you get some which look like Andy Warhol has puked over the photo. And no, it's not art. It's over-use of technology to achieve a crap effect.
To better illustrate my point, here's a single 15 second long exposure taken last year in Scotland - note the reds and blues in the sky....no photoshopping or anything else present at all, a simple long exposure will bring out these colours
Bearing in mind that's a 15 second exposure and some of the shots from Leuven involved up to 45 second exposures...
baz7175 said:
havoc said:
...fake-coloured clouds...
In ALL of the above pics I not once went for "fake-coloured clouds", I've all the multiple long exposures on my portable drive that went into these images, and the colours are present already - so unless my Sony camera has a tendency to puke over them like Andy Warhol while capturing then maybe think before letting your fingers do the typing...- 3 and #4? Come off it...
havoc said:
baz7175 said:
havoc said:
...fake-coloured clouds...
In ALL of the above pics I not once went for "fake-coloured clouds", I've all the multiple long exposures on my portable drive that went into these images, and the colours are present already - so unless my Sony camera has a tendency to puke over them like Andy Warhol while capturing then maybe think before letting your fingers do the typing...- 3 and #4? Come off it...
andy-xr said:
Baz, you dont have to justify your work, if you like it fair play to you
I know Andy, but at the same time I just want to prove my point that these are simply colours present in the long exposures If anyone still wants to doubt the colours, go have a look at the following page that I just took the time to put together on my website, it contains all of the single long exposures used to make images 3 and 4 in my initial post, complete with all main EXIF data
http://www.bazpics.com/aboutme/blog/blog-2009-03-1...
I wasn't saying the colour was applied deliberately - it's a result of the HDR technique when (IMHO only) over-applied. And it just looks WRONG.
I did say that some of the more subtle pics looked good, but some are the Photoshop equivalent of a chav with a Halfords gift-card, to my mind - extremely unsubtle and overdone!
Andy - no, he doesn't have to justify himself. But this isn't a "please polish my ego" forum - it's a photography forum. You can't just post up in the title that you don't want any criticism or negative feedback, FFS!
I did say that some of the more subtle pics looked good, but some are the Photoshop equivalent of a chav with a Halfords gift-card, to my mind - extremely unsubtle and overdone!
Andy - no, he doesn't have to justify himself. But this isn't a "please polish my ego" forum - it's a photography forum. You can't just post up in the title that you don't want any criticism or negative feedback, FFS!
havoc said:
I wasn't saying the colour was applied deliberately - it's a result of the HDR technique when (IMHO only) over-applied. And it just looks WRONG.
I did say that some of the more subtle pics looked good, but some are the Photoshop equivalent of a chav with a Halfords gift-card, to my mind - extremely unsubtle and overdone!
Andy - no, he doesn't have to justify himself. But this isn't a "please polish my ego" forum - it's a photography forum. You can't just post up in the title that you don't want any criticism or negative feedback, FFS!
Maybe if you take the time to rethink what you said before I first replied:-I did say that some of the more subtle pics looked good, but some are the Photoshop equivalent of a chav with a Halfords gift-card, to my mind - extremely unsubtle and overdone!
Andy - no, he doesn't have to justify himself. But this isn't a "please polish my ego" forum - it's a photography forum. You can't just post up in the title that you don't want any criticism or negative feedback, FFS!
"WHY do people think fake-coloured clouds look good in a photo"
I simply showed that even by taking a single, conventional, run of the mill, long exposure image that such colours can still exist...
I'm all for promoting positive and negative criticism etc, but personally sich comments as "a chav with a Halfords gift-card" etc are bordering on personal insults more than anything you can term even in it's loosest possible guise as criticism
havoc said:
And it just looks WRONG.
I did say that some of the more subtle pics looked good, but some are the Photoshop equivalent of a chav with a Halfords gift-card, to my mind - extremely unsubtle and overdone!
Following on from this, would you classify this image as unsubtle and overdone? Discuss!I did say that some of the more subtle pics looked good, but some are the Photoshop equivalent of a chav with a Halfords gift-card, to my mind - extremely unsubtle and overdone!
Edited by CivicMan on Saturday 14th March 14:02
Can't see an image CM. (Edit: Now I can, and 
- was waiting for someone to come up with the 'art' argument! And HDR could be considered to be art - it's certainly not faithful reproduction, and IMHO it takes attention away from the technical qualities of a photograph (for good or bad)! But EVERY genre of art has its critics and its supporters. I just don't like 'heavy' (or heavy-handed) HDR.
Baz - the colours DO look fake, particularly on those 3 I mentioned. You would never see those colours in real-life*. If you think they look good then that's fine. But don't go asking people not to criticise.
* They are a product of reflection of man-made light sources off the clouds, and as such you wouldn't get to see the sky with that level of clarity/brightness where such sources existed because of the light-pollution from the sources that are causing the reflection.
- was waiting for someone to come up with the 'art' argument! And HDR could be considered to be art - it's certainly not faithful reproduction, and IMHO it takes attention away from the technical qualities of a photograph (for good or bad)! But EVERY genre of art has its critics and its supporters. I just don't like 'heavy' (or heavy-handed) HDR.Baz - the colours DO look fake, particularly on those 3 I mentioned. You would never see those colours in real-life*. If you think they look good then that's fine. But don't go asking people not to criticise.
* They are a product of reflection of man-made light sources off the clouds, and as such you wouldn't get to see the sky with that level of clarity/brightness where such sources existed because of the light-pollution from the sources that are causing the reflection.
Edited by havoc on Saturday 14th March 16:54
havoc said:
Baz - the colours DO look fake, particularly on those 3 I mentioned. You would never see those colours in real-life*. If you think they look good then that's fine. But don't go asking people not to criticise.
I don't recall ever asking anyone not to criticise anything, maybe you could show me where I said this?havoc said:
* They are a product of reflection of man-made light sources off the clouds, and as such you wouldn't get to see the sky with that level of clarity/brightness where such sources existed because of the light-pollution from the sources that are causing the reflection.
So, to use your logic above - the colours do exist (albeit due to man-made light sources which I have no problem conceding), and as they do infact exist they therefore can't be fake......anyhooo, HDR is a fickle subject, some love it some hate it - I would even go to the extent of saying more people seem to hate it than love it, but hey it's the variety of people's own tastes that makes everything more interesting, not just photography - it would be damn boring if we all thought the same and shot the same pictures. The only reason I put the warning in the thread title was to warn anyone who's not a fan of HDR of the content to be found inside
Personally, I love them! 
I suppose I side on the "HDR as art" camp. To me, subtle HDRs are, if anything, more of a con, as they're trying to pretend to be something they're not - a single shot with a high dynamic range.
Some of the shots on here go way beyond that, and are obviously HDR shots as a result, but they create a sort of surrealism which is actually to my mind more realistic, since to me they do a better job of including some of the emotional vibrance that you can get on a night out in a great location.
I suppose if I wanted to capture Paris on any one of my fairly dull business trips, then normal photos would be spot on. If I want to capture the feeling of Paris with my wife and absolutely no timetable, then HDR images are spot on.
I suppose I side on the "HDR as art" camp. To me, subtle HDRs are, if anything, more of a con, as they're trying to pretend to be something they're not - a single shot with a high dynamic range.
Some of the shots on here go way beyond that, and are obviously HDR shots as a result, but they create a sort of surrealism which is actually to my mind more realistic, since to me they do a better job of including some of the emotional vibrance that you can get on a night out in a great location.
I suppose if I wanted to capture Paris on any one of my fairly dull business trips, then normal photos would be spot on. If I want to capture the feeling of Paris with my wife and absolutely no timetable, then HDR images are spot on.
Yes I like these images. Perhaps I have not had the overexposure that some people have had, so they are still of interest to me.
Your header is perfectly clear- clearly still a red rag to a bull for some posters though.
Please keep sharing your work and stick 2 fingers up to any bullies.
Your header is perfectly clear- clearly still a red rag to a bull for some posters though.
Please keep sharing your work and stick 2 fingers up to any bullies.
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