Lately I have been trying to simplify the composition and context of my photos. It is a bit of departure from my usual style of photography. So far the main body of photographical work has consisted of landscape shots, usually done with the HDR (high dynamic range) technique
HDR by nature tries to capture the full dynamic range of our natural seeing ability. Since there is no technology that can do that with a single shot, the elegant workaround is to shoot 3 or more exposures of an image and combine them in post production to a single image. This also means you usually have to shoot with a tripod. Although I love the process of shooting and processing HDR images, it sometimes can hinder the natural instinctive way of shooting photos.
Don’t get me wrong, I love post processing, twiddling with knobs and sliders (most of I even know the functions of – because I am a geek) and taking my time setting up a tripod and really thinking about the image I want to capture. But it also takes away some of the gratification of shooting images from the hip. I won’t stop doing HDR by any means, just right now, with so many other things a young father has on his mind, I am quite happy not hauling my tripod everywhere and shooting triple the amount of exposures for every picture I shoot. And then there is the amount of time it takes to process them, too.
The result is quite liberating and it has led me to concentrate on shape, texture and composition more. This is an ongoing process and I will collect my favorite results in the gallery Pure & Simple.
I’d be very interested in your feedback and hearing what you guys think.
As always there is a story to every picture. This are the stairs of the hospital my wife gave birth to Vincent. As we were overdue and wanted to enforce labor we walked and moved a lot – which helps the process. We must have walked up these stairs hundreds of times. At one point I actually looked up…
[ssba]
