HDR compare and contrast

I stumbled upon HDR One magazine the other day and obviously it's a great resource for the type of photography that I most commonly do. As well as the articles themselves, it's also provided some great suggestions of HDR software out there. I've picked up a demo of Machinery to try it out and it's definitely an interesting contrast with Photomatix. Machinery does profess an intent towards natural HDR, which isn't usually what I aim for but maybe I should. All the more reason to experiment.

I must emphasise at this point that I have, at time of writing, only had to run a couple of images through it so there's lots more exploration to be done but here are two images- the first done in Photomatix, the second done in Machinery: The difference is obvious- Machinery certainly does create a more naturalistic HDR image. Also look at how crisp that bastard is! Not only does Machinery provide built-in sharpening but the halo-ing effect (so often the bane of HDR) is reduced, presumably due to the more natural look. Take a look at the streetlights on the left of the image, for example (both in the foreground and the BG) and the superior detail on the shelf of Buddha figures. It's also astonishingly fast and does a genuine live change as opposed to Photomatix's two-stage 'guestimate' process, which has always bothered me, to be honest.

Obviously this image comparison also depends on the settings and post-HDR-processing each image has been run through. They've both had the contrast lowered and brightness increased. The Photomatix image was sharpened a touch and the Machinery one had it's saturation upped a bit since lowering the contrast left it a little washed out (or maybe I'm just too used to Photomatix output).

Overall, perhaps as you'd expect, it seems that the different softwares both have areas in which they are superior but it certainly seems that the de facto industry standard position that Photomatix seems to enjoy can be challenged. In any case, I definitely need to do some more experimentation with Machinery to see what I can get out of it but first experience has definitely left a positive impression.

More exposure

A couple of bits of exposure over the last couple of days- first, a photo I took of a statue of Cupid in... Norway (or was it Denmark?) headed up an article on Wired.com. It's not my favourite photo by any means, but it serves the purpose. Then today, my city's local newspaper used an HDR photo I took of a local landmark in this article.

This is where stuff gets interesting- MEN didn't tell me they were using my picture, nor did they link to my Flickr account- a randomer commented on my Flickr account telling me that they'd used it. Then one of the other photographers whose photos had also been used. While it's fine for them to use my photo by the terms of the creative commons licensing I've placed on them, the other photographer enforces copyright on his and they'd not contacted him prior to using his photo either. Poor show for a professional publication.

I'm just grateful of the exposure, however, even if they're not generating me traffic through a link.

Southeast Asia photos

I struggle to know what to write about travel photos so I think it's safe to say I'll never be a travel blogger. It suffices to say that, for my Southeast Asia trip, I took in a great number of locations over three weeks and got a few dozen decent photos out of it. In lieu of a more wordy description, here's a small selection of the photos taken on that trip. The full selection and perhaps a bit more info on each shot can be found in the Flickr set.