I'm an advocate of finding one's own ground on how one creates an image rather than finding the middle ground from others' opinions.
Julie
Hi Julie - Yes I totally agree, you should do what you want to do and not what others tell you to do. But having said that and already having gone all the way down the HDR road myself before realising, that in terms of photographic longevity, that traditional looking images, are going to be around as long as photography is around, wheras HDR is a transient (albeit very popular) fashion and even though this type of image can be very pleasing in the short term, I just do not see HDR having the legs to remain so over time.
I mean we can all recite the names of famous photographers, but how many of us know the name of even one (if there is one) famous HDR photographer?
So my advice is yes go for it, HDR the hell out of it, but only as a way of getting it out of your system, so you can then concentrate on producing photographs that look like photographs.
But as I say, this is only my view of things and I do not want to start any kind of argument or discussion on the merits or otherwise of HDR, it is only my opinion based on my own experience and as such I post for you all, one of my HDR efforts from several years ago, for everyone to go "Ooh" and "Ahh" at, or alternatively bemoan the day that HDR was ever invented..
all the best and here it is:
Photobloke