A church HDR

joolsveer

I took a few shots down in my local church with a view to emulating Fenster's Galway HDRs. I would be grateful for your comments on them.

This is a link to the Flickr page of one of them.
http://static.flickr.com/49/151115166_8d11dc895b.jpg

elven

I think they look better than an awful lot of the hdrs I've seen, they don't have that fake plasticky look about them... the colours are nice and they are quite warm and sombre in general which I think suits the mood of a church.

The one that you actually posted the link to seems slightly abruptly cut off though, when it was loading I expected it to be the top half of a portrait image rather than a landscape. It's probably because it only shows half of the window and the tables are cut off at the legs - the others look a lot better balanced and well composed.

I expect it's difficult to try and find something different to shoot in a church because it's been done so much, so I can appreciate the central one even though it's not unusual - it's very nicely done I think. They work well as a group too.

joolsveer

Thanks for the comments elven. I used a 200mm lens for the truncated one because there were people in the church - as you can see in one of the shots - and I wanted to leave them out of shot without making a nuisance of myself. I was lucky that all the lights were on as I reckon that gave a better chance of getting one usable photo.

Fenster

Some good shots there. Looking at this, I'll just say that getting a decent HDR shot of branches like that is pretty tricksy - I've only manged it myself once, to any great effect.

The church looks great - they're always a fantastic subject for HDR photos. One thing I ask you try out is closeups of the stained-glass windows.

Valentia

I agree with elven. These are very natural HDR shots compared to most that I have seen. There is a very strong feeling of depth to the pews and the light is great. I must give it a try myself though generally speaking the results I have seen are too false and oddly flat for my liking.

elven

Don't want to go off on a tangent too much but generally I find the HDRs that I don't like so much are the ones that don't actually require the HDR treatment - they don't have lots of deep shadows and bright highlights, and they usually have blue sky with some clouds that gets turned grey and murky in the process. These church pictures, however, with the stained glass and the low interior lighting suit it perfectly I think.

But when I saw the pictures on www.cambridgeincolour.com I started thinking that the HDR thing really has some beautiful possibilities, they have some fabulous pictures on there. But they don't appear to use the HDR feature of CS2 or a bespoke package as such, it's more of a case of combining the images manually so that they control which bits come from which exposure. I'm sure it must take absolutely hours of work.

Did you use the HDR in CS2 jools? I've yet to install it, I'm still not using half the stuff in CS yet as it is...

Valentia

Thanks for that link elven. Interesting stuff indeed.

joolsveer

I used Photomatix elven as when I've tried PS I thought the results were much duller.

pclancy

I love the hills and goals HDR pics the most.

Really like the church and car one too but would like it better without the car and and just having the hedge at the bottom of the pic. Colours are lovely.

joolsveer

pclancy wrote:

I love the hills and goals HDR pics the most.

Really like the church and car one too but would like it better without the car and and just having the hedge at the bottom of the pic. Colours are lovely.

I might try recropping it as suggested.

joolsveer

I have had a shot at recropping the original to get rid of the car. What do you think?
http://static.flickr.com/50/151875693_03ba189d61.jpg

pclancy

Very Nice