I have been downloading HDR images over the past few months and using them as desktop images because they are so evocative. I was fascinated by this digital processing technique and although I did find some good technical explanations about how the effect was achieved, I didn’t quite get it. Until I found this fine little tutorial from Trey Ratcliff. He’s done a great job of explaining both the technicalities as well as providing some easy to follow tutorials.
My current desktop looks like this (click to see very large – note that close box is in lower right corner of image):
Its a very curiously cluttered image I know and really a bit of an impractical desktop, but its just so coool. I downloaded it from BHo’s Flikr stream Its a Korean shipyard and heavy HDR.
There is a growing volume of HDR photos showing up on Flikr and other such services.
If you don’t know, High Dynamic Range imaging involves playing with the contrast,sometimes combining photos with different exposures to create rather surreal images. Colours pop and detail is made much more uniformly exposed. In short the technique makes a sort of unreality.
So you get very cool looking photos. Although that in itself is something, I was struck by Trey’s rationale for why he uses it. As he says, “I think it helps to evoke my actual memories of the scene.” Intriguing. This statement gave me pause to think. It reminds me of the technique used in Wim Wenders Until the End of the World where the various members of the family record their visions through a sophisticated apparatus to bring vision to the blind mother. Recording what they see is one thing, but the second step in the process was to record what they saw, through remembering, as an overlay/filter/clarifier. I don’t know why this has so stuck with me. This technique though seems to be an inadvertent part of the process. But it asks a question. What does a memory look like? Do we have photographic recall, or are our memories coloured by other emotional or sensual aspects. I think everyone will agree that memories clearly have attached emotions, temperature, smell, etc. I find it interesting that Trey feels that these images are a step closer to capturing memories than we can simply rely on achieving by exposing CCDs to light. This HDR thing is curious.