Capitol Hill HDR

One Monday morning, I headed downtown early to beat the traffic before Scott Kelby's Photoshop for Digital Photographers seminar. I wandered up to Capitol Hill and took a bracketed image of the Capitol building, just in case I wanted to play with it in an HDR at some point.

Later at Scott's seminar, he did a lesson on HDR and brought up the issue of the great debate of HDR in the photography community right now. We've all seen what he was talking about, heated discussions between photography purists and those who've embraced this new technique. I've found that to be a rather ridiculous discussion as, in my humble opinion, when it comes to any art form, including photography, beauty is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder.

Sitting in Scott's class, I thought back to the photos I took that morning, and decided I'd fire a shot off the bow of those who are so vehemently against HDR. I came home and generated the most overprocessed HDR image I could with the photos I took, and you know what - I'm not ashamed to say I think it looks kind of cool. 

If you disagree with me and think it's awful - that's perfectly OK. Whether it's the composition of a photo, a particular lens selection, or a new post processing technique - we're not going to all agree on what looks good and what doesn't. However, if folks don't continue to push into new territory, our art will eventually stagnate and die. Remember that when your critiquing the next guys for trying something new and different. 

So for the photographers in the crowd, go make your art and don't look back.