John Santoro's blog

We usually get a nice charge when we browse through the HDR photos on Flickr. We came across this beauty of the New York City Public Library in Manhattan. Shot by Betty Wiley and processed in HDR Express this image shows that Unified Color apps, which are known for natural HDR results, also do a killer job of creating the grunge look. Betty is an award winning photographer based on Cape Cod. Check out her site.

You know ISO refers to the sensitivity of your image sensor and harks back to the day when ISO 100 (or ASA 100 for you veterans) meant you had a fine grain film. In digital SLRs it is the setting that will give you the least amount of noise and artifacts. The lower the ISO the less noise and artifacts you will have in your photos. This is an important fact when you are merging three or more photos into an HDR file.

New to this discussion of ISO is the term "Native ISO". The folks at SLR Lounge do a great job of explaining the issue of ISO when doing HDR photography and toward the end of this video they explain "Native ISO".

The HDR shooting question we get most often is "how do I determine the exposures for my HDR bracket images?" You can make your exposure determination by trial and error or get a bit more technical and as a result, more accurate. Either way, developing a method you're comfortable with is essential. You really don't want to be fumbling around when the fleeting, perfect image is right there in front of you.

Here's a great little instructional article and video on exposure for HDR that will help you develop your own method on slrlounge.com

An image from Sabastiao Salgado's Genisis project

Sabastiao Salgado is one of the giants of 20th-21st century photography. He is known for his almost exclusive and elegant use of black and white which is especially suited to the types of epic projects of human and environmental upheaval he pursues.

Salgado is now on the last of his great photographic projects which he will be working on for the next few years called Genesis. He is seeking out places that are still as pristine as they were in primeval times, places that provide hope.

We wanted to highlight Salgado's work because all photographers employing HDR techniques can pull some inspiration from his classic sense of compositional balance.

Here is a sample of this project that can be seen more fully at Time's Lightbox and at the The Guardian in the U.K.

We were bouncing around the HDR section of Flickr and came across this great image of the Maine coast. This is a great example of the "natural HDR" that our applications are all about.

This image is by Rob Hanson and can be seen on Flickr along with a ton of other great HDR images.

Every once in a while we need to point you to some great photography that is not necessarily HDR. We're big fans of Stephen Wilkes who was recently featured in Digital Photo Pro. The article covers the span of his work from assisting commercial photo icon Jay Maisel to his current (awesome) project "Day To Night". In the "Day To Night" project Wilkes merges photos of a single scene taken over a 24 hour period: must see photography.

Here's an image from Wilkes' "Bethlehem Steel" project and a link to the DPP article "Stephen Wilkes: Bodies Of Work".

Photoshop User magazine, the magazine for members of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals just took a look at HDR Express 2 and liked what they saw, giving it four our of five stars.

"HDR Express 2 takes a complicated process and simplifies it, especially for people new to creating HDR images. HDR Express 2 expands your dynamic range in a photorealistic way instead of the more prevalent stylistic or surreal effects...Express 2 performs well and produces quality HDR images."

Thank you Photoshop User!

Contest entry manipulated in Photoshop

In news photography Photoshop manipulation that removes or adds elements is the magnum faux-pas. Dating back to the days of Tri-X and multi-contrast prints dodging, burning and selective cropping has been a somewhat questionable practice in photojournalism. Now that virtually all photojournalism is digital and dependent on Photoshop, the sometimes powerful temptation to add or remove elements of a photograph to increase visual impact looms large.

The most interesting aspect of this recent incident of a Washington Post photographer eliminating the referee in his contest entry wrestling photo is the newspaper's management's decisiion to notify the contest committee of the crime.

We're big fans of natural looking HDR and using HDR techniques to create images that amaze you not for their processing but for the believability true HDR can bring to a scene. So, we've been pretty interested in the growing HDR community on Google+.

Every so often we feel the need to highlight a non-HDR photograph. We love this image by L.A. pro photographer Vincent Versace for its lovely natural light and sensitive treatment of this woman's character. Frequently travel photography can be void of the interactive emotion necessary to translate the soul of the person being photographed. Here we see soul.

If you're as impressed with Versace's black and white techniques check out his book From Oz to Kansas: Almost Every Black and White Conversion Technique Known to Man. It will reopen your mind to black and white, especially to those of you who remain sentimental about Tri-X and D-76.