March 28, 2024

HDR Photos by Trey Ratcliff

Yesterday I had the pleasure to meet the great HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff, the guy behind the world famous travel photography blog Stuck in Customs in a really nice Photowalk around Stanford University. His photos are an explosion of colors, they are pure inspiration. I even remember the first time I saw his work, back in 2008, and I was not familiar with HDR, so the beauty of the images got my attention and I wanted to know more about the technique and the guy behind that blog.

For those not familiar, HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. As Trey would say, “This technique allow you to see what your eyes see through the lenses.” There are people that love HDR and people who think these photos are over manipulated… check out the images and let us know what do you think.

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

HDR - Trey Ratcliff

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Gisele Muller loves communication, technology, web, design, movies, gastronomy and creativity. Web writer, portuguese/english translator and co founder of @refilmagem & @mentaway Twitter: @gismullr

6 Comments

  1. xx89 Reply

    Uh is this still a web design blog? I’m about to give up and stop coming here. If I want to look at photography and logos I’ll go to abduzeedo. Seriously, enough of this.

  2. fvsch Reply

    I don’t get how anyone can pretend that this is close to what the eye sees. No photographic process matches what the eyes and brain see, because our vision is something continuous, with our eyes focusing on several elements of a scenery and the brain building an overall image with those pieces of information. And of course there are many ways of looking at something, so the “picture” or “feel” in your brain is going to be different depending on your mood, what catches your eye, what you want to see, etc.

    So we should judge a photograph by how expressive the result is. If what you like is being able to see small details in every part of a photograph thanks to average lighting everywhere and a lot of micro-contrast, then you will love HDR. If what you like is photographs with an expressive mood and strong focus points thanks to global contrast (with some parts of the photographs being darker and others lighter), then full-blown HDR is definitely not for you.

    I tend to like expressive photographs and don’t care about pictures that try to capture all of the subject without drawing attention to anything so yeah, most of those photographs look bland to me. Also, the over-saturated colors make them look gaudy. Four or five photographs are quite good, because the HDR processing was less heavy-handed and actually added something to the shot.

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