Friday, June 02, 2006

Experiments in HDR portraiture

I went out on a photoshoot today with Lanette, who is just plain tearin' up the world with her new camera. There's no thing too big or too little or too just plain weird for her to take a photo of it. ;) Now, one of the fun advantages to having a shooting buddy is that you can beg them to be your model. I've been wondering what HDR photography can do for portraiture -- given how long it takes to flip between bracketed shots, it reminds me, in technique, of some of the long-exposure portraits of long ago. So I had Lanette stand still for a while in some poses while I did the HDR thing. I tried to violate all the rules, too, by having strong backlighting and using a superwide lens (I hope she forgives me!) and being symmetrical and centered. I tried toning these photos realistically, but honestly, I preferred the painterly option that HDR offers, especially in the recliner shot. Reminds me a bit of some of the silky-smooth long-exposure portraiture that a few artists were experimenting with back in the 50s.



Interestingly enough, for the 'close up' photo in the church, her nose is about three inches from my lens. That's one wide lens.



Click to enlarge in a new window.











3 comments:

Patrick Potts said...

That's awesome, I never thought about portraits in HDR. Of course, my current digital is too noisy for HDR. Great stuff man.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting, indeed.

When enlarged, they have a feel of being put together as several layers. Once my new camera arrives, I'll sure have a try with HDR. Thanks for your tutorial on that, too!

Bryan Crump said...

I really like the work you do. I jsut starting using HDR myself and find that unless you do things certain ways it warps colors sometimes. I use a variety of techniques with my latest HDR which is just my 6th image done using it. Portraits that is. I have a Canon 20D and find myself wanting an even better camera to take larger pictures to turn into HDR.

Here is a tutorial I made, let me know what you think:

http://bryancrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/photo-editing-enhancing-detail-and.html