Los Angeles Panorama HDR

Very cool! An exellent panorama!

Absolutely brilliant.

Fantastic, best Panorama iv seen.

You are capable of producing excellent work, what I can't understand is why you ruin these images by HDR, having looked through your Gallery, there are images that at times are inspirational, if only you had left them how they should be, instead the dreaded HDR comes into play, and the end result is so artificial/false/overp​rocessed they lose their appeal completely.

That's a little harsh Les... but to each his own of course.

I love his HDR work. I've not seen anyone who can do it so well. His pictures end up quite surreal... I always look at his image and think how "outside the box" he is. There aren't many photographers who are willing to push the norms a bit, instead of following the same rules over and over.

IMO, his work is great, and he should continue perfecting it.

Very nice indeed. Did you use CS2 to combine the bracketed shots? I've only dabbled with it so far but have not been impressed with my results. Any tips?

Ron

Pete,

Very impressive photo, I'm not a big HDR fan but I like the look of this one.

Vic

absoltuly amazing!

AdamJL wrote in post #2054511
That's a little harsh Les... but to each his own of course.

His pictures end up quite surreal... I always look at his image and think how "outside the box" he is. .

I'm not criticising the author's photographic skills, his eye for what works is impressive, I think you hit the nail on the head, the images look surreal, when I think they should look 'real'
IMO of course.

Cool job, I'd love to see this on a huge print!

Size matters hahaha great shot~

The full version of this is really spectacular!

Pete, for me the part that holds the most interest is the sky. Im not much of a city person but what you've done with the sky is fantastic, excellent pano.

Thanks for all the comments.

Ron, I use Photomatix to merge the exposures into an HDR, and also for tone mapping compression.

Lesmac, I think you're missing the point of HDR altogether. By exposing seperately for the highlights, midtones and shadows you can extend the dynamic range and produce higher quality/lower noise detail across the entire range of tones. So, 'the dreaded HDR', which causes such 'artificial/false/over​processed' images, as you put it, has absolutely nothing to do with HDR. To accuse me of ruining my own images and leave them as they should be is a bit uncalled for, considering you have absolutely no idea what they should look like. Can you show me examples of what you're on about?
The big problem with the HDR technique is the Tone Compression. It's this that causes such overprocessed/un-natural looking images, and it's my aim too avoid this at all costs. Any of my images that do look un-natural (as I see it) are merely a consequence of lack of experience in the early phase of the learning curve. I've been using HDR for about 10 months, and I would say only the last month am I starting the get the results I desire from this technique.
I suggest you do your research before you make such disparaging comments about a technique you clearly know nothing about.

Frank, funnily enough, the sky is the one part of it I'm not entirely happy with, but it did actually look like that.

Very, very nice. The sky is also my favorite part of the image.