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I bought Photomatix in 2008 not even completely sure what I was supposed to do with it. I was in that phase where I figured the more software I bought that had to do with photography the better my photos would look, right? HAHAHHAHAHAHHA. Man was I way off. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a whirl, and I think the real issue was that I was taking pictures of things that really didn’t need an HDR treatment. They were bad pictures, and that made them worse in HDR…My brother used to say, “you can’t polish a turd.” I guess he was right.

After a while of fiddling around, I invariably ended up on Trey Ratcliff’s excellent, heavily-traveled website. From there, I actually saw the HDR could be done tastefully, and could do what it was supposed to do: capture the dynamic range of a scene using multiple exposures. While I appreciate good HDR, I have to say that the various Flickr groups that have been abusing the heck out of the technique have scared me off. At this point, once I recognize the effect, I immediately think the picture is less good, and that includes my own.

Anyway, there was a time when I did HDR so much that I actually got pretty good at it, and a number of my HDR prints are available for purchase. I’m not saying I won’t use the technique again, but there’s a time and place for it, and that time and place might end up being on some of my wedding shoots. More to come on that as I evolve it!

Meanwhile, check out my own HDR stream over at Flickr.