Sunday, September 27, 2009

Barry Chignell from FreePhotoResources and more…

 

Barry Chignell, Friend and Founder of FreePhotoResources recently took a trip to London. There Barry made some striking photographs of the city’s familiar landmarks. His use of HDR and post-processing leaves the viewer  in awe of the subject matter that exists in his compositions.

There is a surreal quality to the images that Barry creates. It gives the viewer a dynamic glimpse  and approach to the subject matter that he is photographing. Barry is anything but your average digital photographer. While he does produce a vast amount of HDR photographs he does have a collection of images that do not present any sort of HDR manipulations. Instead, they have a fine art quality and aspect that conjures up memories of being at the coast as a child.

I wouldn’t classify Barry as a landscape photographer because of his large interest in other types of photography. Though his landscape photographs are breath taking. For example, Frost 2, (being one of my favorite images he has made) he presents the landscape, a tree stump, and the morning frost in a stylistic manner that we normally wouldn’t see. The visual qualities in this photograph, being the vibrant colors and the sharp details in the vines, the vegetated growth that has died off, plus the overall mood, make this an outstanding example of and HDR landscape. Had this photograph been made in a more traditional manner, such as black and white film and printed in a darkroom, I do not think it would evoke such an desire to view it.

View more photographs from Barry’s trip to London. FreePhotoResources.com trip to London

View a larger collection of Barry’s photographs at his Flickr Photo Stream 

 

 Tower Bridge

 Trafalgar Square Fountain

 Arch

 Gherkin2

 

HDR

Quality of light plus the quantity of light: Does having the proper amount of light mixed with the type of light make a difference when it comes to making HDR photographs? This is a question I have formulated over the months and months of HDR shooting that I have been doing. The answer is yes. Yes, the quality and quantity of light is a massive factor in the end result of your photographs. This can also be applied to photography in general, not just HDR. For those who have not heard of the Golden Hour, the golden hour is the first and last hour of sun set. The “right” time to be out making photographs that have a strong quality of light. By the “right time”, I am of course referring to not being out in the middle of the day, (11am-3 or 4ish pm) where the sun is can cause bright highlights and deep dark shadows. This can work in some situations, but majority of the time shooting in conditions like this is best avoided. Hence the quality of light being to poor at times to get powerful, impacting, surreal HDR photographs.

This is where quality and quantity come into play. The quantity of the light can be to strong and produce an unflattering photograph. These are just a few things to keep in mind when you are setting out to make some photographs. However, in the photographs shown above, the use of strong lighting works very well because of the thick cloud coverage. The clouds provided enough diffusing light to come through that it didn’t create to harsh of highlights or shadows. Instead it allowed Barry to create these masterful images. A special thanks to Barry for allowing his images to be shared.

Photograph made during the Golden Hour

Littleville dam 8

Jeffrey Byrnes

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