To the questions:
Why is it that my photos…
show me thing I did not want to take
or don't show me what I wanted to take?
Why would I need a ND filter?
Hey, I got a question:
Why are my skies so pale… they were not like that?
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
All these questions have a common denominator:
UNDERSTANDING MEMORY!
The BRAIN
The human brain is capable of processing images at a speed that is barely
imaginable! The whole day, from the minute you wake up, your brain will
process zzzzillions of images and you will not fell like you've lost any "frame"
of it. This enormous processing power comes from "short term memory" (RAM)!
The "scratch disk" in our brain is immensely fast and immensely unreliable!
Unreliable? Yes for sure! If you live in a city, you will see thousands of cars
every day but what do you remember of them? A video camera will not loose
a single plate number it has seen that day but you can't answer the question:
"How many cabs have you seen today? Or fire trucks?"
We do not need all this information to survive! We will recognize and remember
danger most certainly, many smiles will be forgotten immediately and we culti-
vate resentment towards aggressive behaviour, etc!
The CAMERA
A camera is not biased by our insecurity, expectations, and anxieties. It will, in
1/250s, record more than we can ever look at! …and it will not forget a thing. It
will not "feel" anything either about the content of its memory… but we do!
In PRACTICE
When you look at a scene, on a nice sunny later afternoon, and you're thinking
the shot you see is worth taking, you see in HDR! The darker areas will dilate
your pupils and the brighter ones will contract them. And, in the mean time, the
2 or more zones will be recorded in your short term memory as an acceptable
image —well worth recording.
And this is where the perceptual problem begins!
You go home thinking of the scene with your compensated version in your memory.
Once in your computer, the skies are blown out or the ground is too dark! The
reason is that the lens, when it recorded the picture, used only one aperture as
your eyes could use many to compose the scene in your memory.
This is HDR vision! Your camera, not even my top of the line cameras, can achieve
this on one take… your eyes neither by the way: you had to go several times over
the whole scene to adjust it and built it up in your memory. These are the observations
that got some people to develop the technique called HDR (High Dynamic Range).
The NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTERS
This approach to render correctly what was seen is the one I prefer by far. It
will demand some time and care to achieve a acceptable result but of all the
techniques, it is the only one that will give a natural look as you remember it.
Understanding how the eye-brain combo works at capturing and processing all
these images is crucial to render correctly what one saw and felt.
The HDR TECHNIQUES
Personally, I do not like the images produced this way… the look is more tragic
imagery than photography (this is my opinion, not science). The only place I saw
proper use of the full potential of HDR is in non-natural environments. Spectacular!
HDR is nothing new, really! Dodging and burning have been around since a hundred
years in darkrooms all around the world. The digital technologies have just adapted it.
Vbrg,
Why is it that my photos…
show me thing I did not want to take
or don't show me what I wanted to take?
Why would I need a ND filter?
Hey, I got a question:
Why are my skies so pale… they were not like that?
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
All these questions have a common denominator:
UNDERSTANDING MEMORY!
The BRAIN
The human brain is capable of processing images at a speed that is barely
imaginable! The whole day, from the minute you wake up, your brain will
process zzzzillions of images and you will not fell like you've lost any "frame"
of it. This enormous processing power comes from "short term memory" (RAM)!
The "scratch disk" in our brain is immensely fast and immensely unreliable!
Unreliable? Yes for sure! If you live in a city, you will see thousands of cars
every day but what do you remember of them? A video camera will not loose
a single plate number it has seen that day but you can't answer the question:
"How many cabs have you seen today? Or fire trucks?"
We do not need all this information to survive! We will recognize and remember
danger most certainly, many smiles will be forgotten immediately and we culti-
vate resentment towards aggressive behaviour, etc!
The CAMERA
A camera is not biased by our insecurity, expectations, and anxieties. It will, in
1/250s, record more than we can ever look at! …and it will not forget a thing. It
will not "feel" anything either about the content of its memory… but we do!
In PRACTICE
When you look at a scene, on a nice sunny later afternoon, and you're thinking
the shot you see is worth taking, you see in HDR! The darker areas will dilate
your pupils and the brighter ones will contract them. And, in the mean time, the
2 or more zones will be recorded in your short term memory as an acceptable
image —well worth recording.
And this is where the perceptual problem begins!
You go home thinking of the scene with your compensated version in your memory.
Once in your computer, the skies are blown out or the ground is too dark! The
reason is that the lens, when it recorded the picture, used only one aperture as
your eyes could use many to compose the scene in your memory.
This is HDR vision! Your camera, not even my top of the line cameras, can achieve
this on one take… your eyes neither by the way: you had to go several times over
the whole scene to adjust it and built it up in your memory. These are the observations
that got some people to develop the technique called HDR (High Dynamic Range).
The NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTERS
This approach to render correctly what was seen is the one I prefer by far. It
will demand some time and care to achieve a acceptable result but of all the
techniques, it is the only one that will give a natural look as you remember it.
Understanding how the eye-brain combo works at capturing and processing all
these images is crucial to render correctly what one saw and felt.
The HDR TECHNIQUES
Personally, I do not like the images produced this way… the look is more tragic
imagery than photography (this is my opinion, not science). The only place I saw
proper use of the full potential of HDR is in non-natural environments. Spectacular!
HDR is nothing new, really! Dodging and burning have been around since a hundred
years in darkrooms all around the world. The digital technologies have just adapted it.
Vbrg,
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