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Features

Situations Where You Should Never Use HDR Photography

Chris Gampat
No Comments
06/29/2014
3 Mins read

HDR Sample From The NEX-F3

While HDR processing is still touted by many, there are some situations where it just doesn’t belong. For the uninitiated, HDR photography has to do with the processing of an image that both lowers the contrast and brings out the most details in both the highlights and the shadows. The point of the final image is to create something closer to what the human eye may see. This is typically and traditionally accomplished by shooting images at different bracketed settings. For example, you’d shoot a perfectly exposed image, then one set that is brighter and another that is darker.

All of this has to do with the dynamic range of your camera sensor: which is why the process is called high dynamic range photography to begin with.

But there are scenes where HDR is unnecessary.

Portraits

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Phase One IQ250 more with Nat (2 of 2)ISO 1001-100 sec at f - 5.0

Amongst the absolute most frightening things that we’ve seen in this industry is HDR portraits. We don’t know what would possess you to do them, but portraits aren’t meant to be shown off in HDR. Additionally, they can make the subject look terrible. While the film look can embrace the lower contrast preferences, it does it with some understanding that you won’t capture an entire scene’s shadows and highlights.

There is a difference between HDR and HDR toning though– and sometimes the toning can look good on a black and white image if you’re embracing its gritty side. Otherwise though, HDR portraits look terrible.

So please don’t do them.

Weddings/Engagements

Chris Gampat Kim and Dan's Engagement black and white for the web (21 of 34)

Going along with the theme photographing people, one of the last places where you should do an HDR is at a wedding or during an engagement session. These images are meant to capture a couple at one of the most important times of their life. Shooting any images in HDR ruins it all. Again, we don’t care to see the details in areas where they aren’t important–and shooting a wedding should be more about capturing the events as they happen.

Event/News Coverage

julius motal the phoblographer fujifilm x-a1 rockettes image 04

Now answer us this: why the heck would you want HDR photography to be part of your news or event coverage. It’s been seen for sure though–browse the pages of 500px and you’re bound to find it for sure. HDR shouldn’t be part of news coverage because traditionally news isn’t supposed to have any sort of crazy editing except for basic exposure changes, cropping, and maybe some saturation.  But no one wants to see their party shot in HDR.

Street Photography

julius motal fujifilm full frame 01

Another situation where it is totally weird to see HDR is street photography. Now once again, some of you may be confusing this with high contrast. And HDR isn’t about high contrast, it’s about low contrast. High Contrast black and white is often used for street photography along with excessive sharpness and clarity adjustments. But there is no need to make us see all the details in the clouds and in the darkest corner of a city block.

Sports

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sony NEX 7 Ice Skating (9 of 9)

Lastly, a situation where we’ve also seen HDR is in sports coverage. Sports, like news, is supposed to be very cookie cutter. And most of all, it’s about the content of the image rather than the technical processing. When you take this away and focus on bringing out the details of everything in the scene, the moment that you’ve captured loses its magic.

HDR hdr photography News Photography portraits sports street photography
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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