Babs Young has been out and about in a boat, which is pretty much the best way to spend almost any day, especially in the lovely autumn. She writes:
I had an opportunity to make a boat trip up the Grass River to Lake Bellaire last week when it was warm and sunny. It was a perfect day and filled with photo ops. This is just one picture–you can see more on Flickr. Now I must confess that I’ve enhanced this image in Photoshop with HDR toning. Just to be transparent.
That rascal, playing with the software again. I am almighty curious to learn what you think of HDR. (Also many other things, but for once I will confine myself to the subject at hand.)
Posted in: Babs Young photos
Torch Lake Views 
rapidcityrecess
October 16, 2011
I’m a fan of any software that allows the photographer more accurately portray what she saw. And I am certainly in favor of it when said photographer is blatantly transparent about its use. In this particular case, I think the HDR makes the image look like a postcard 🙂
Carsten
October 17, 2011
Babs has an ability to visit places with beautiful views and to catch them with her camera. This image is no exception.
But when it comes to HDR, my enthusiasm is ambigious. HDR is a tool which, to some extent, is able to produce a picture as we think we saw it. Not always can the camera or our eye deal with the large dynamic range that mother nature now and then offers. Here the HDR technique is a good help.
But in this case, the tool is not used for this. Instead, the technique is used to give an artistic touch to the picture, it appears as a cross between a impressionistic painting and a photo. Personally, I think that this application should be used with caution. To mee it is too artificial with the bright ‘aura’ around the trees.
My humble opinion 🙂 Remember I like your pictures Babs!
P.j. grath
October 17, 2011
I thought it looked like a painting used as a cover illustration on a sporting magazine. But what do the letters stand for?
Grass River, anyway, is a beautiful place, even if a visitor is land-bound and confined to the trails and boardwalks. I highly recommend it.
Gerry
October 17, 2011
This is all so interesting to me. Thank you all for the good comments.
I love to see what photographers come up with, and I have no qualms about their use of software as a tool in fulfilling a creative vision. Experimentation is at the heart of every creative endeavor, isn’t it? So the question becomes not how did you make this image, but what do I think of it?
I looked at the collection of Grass River photos Babs uploaded to Flickr, and my personal preference is for the non-HDR images in that set. Still, there is something compelling about the textures that emerged in HDR.
I like it when Babs and Katherine–and Carsten and Scott and Preston and Anna and Ken–get to playing. I’m not always wild about a given result, but it always gives me something to marvel at outside my own head.
Oh – PJ? You’ll like this. I spent a surprising amount of time inspecting the photo in search of the letters you wanted interpreted. Finally the coin dropped. HDR=High Dynamic Range.
Babs Young
October 17, 2011
HDR or High Dynamic Range is where a photographer makes several exposures of the scene. One to expose for the highlights, one for midtones and one for the lowlight areas. Then they make more in between that because they are obsessive. Then these exposures are melded together to make one image with a large or high dynamic range. So now Photoshop has some spiffy tools in it that will create this effect without having to make a number of exposures. Since I’m a rather lazy photographer who does not really like using a tripod and doing this in a moving boat is impossible, I rely on the wonders of this software.
Gerry
October 17, 2011
“Lazy” my hind foot. Obsessive I’ll buy. (Wicked little grin.)
Someday I’d like to watch you work with a photo. It would be an education.
Joss
October 18, 2011
Strangely, it has the vividness of sepia photos that used to be coloured by hand. I have some old ones like that on my wall. I really like the intensity because it reminds of how it feels to actually be there in a landscape like that. Now that I’ve had the aura effect pointed out, however, I wish I hadn’t.
Gerry
October 18, 2011
Oh dear. That’s always the risk we run, isn’t it, when we talk about the work rather than just be with it. I have an antidote for you. Click on the link to Babs’s Flickr gallery and explore the Grass River with her.
Kathy
October 18, 2011
Enjoying Bab’s photo very much, and wishing to be a little bird watching her as she worked with the HDR. I hardly know anything about changing a photo, besides basic editing, and am usually impressed (and sometimes envious) about some of the results. Also pondering how we grew up visiting Intermediate Lake but never once went to Lake Bellaire, unless memory eludes.
Gerry
October 19, 2011
Hi Kathy! I can just see you splashing around in PhotoShop. You’d be down the rabbit hole for sure. It looks like too much fun, doesn’t it?
As for the lakes, I think it’s a case of “so many lakes so little summer.” When you have a cottage on Intermediate, and Torch Lake beckons right over there, and beyond that is Big Blue . . . spoilt for choice, aren’t we?
Sybil
October 22, 2011
HDR sounds like a lot of work I just hit “auto correct”. 😉