Jack,
Let me try to explain the type of HDR most of us "hate" in terms that you can relate to, i.e., in terms of focus-stacking.
You use focus-stacking selectively (and rightly so): you bring the main object into sharp focus, while keeping the background nicely blurred. The best of both worlds, indeed.
Agreed.
Now, imagine you do not stop with focus-stacking when you have the main object sharp, but continue focus-stacking all the way to infinity, rendering absolutely everything along the way tack-sharp. Do I hear you say: eeeewww!? You do not want the background sharpness to interfere with the main object, you'd say, it defies the purpose!
And that is why we "hate" some HDR: it brings attention to every tone, every detail, every shadow and every highlight... everything becomes visible and everything appears important.
I personally would consider such an extensive focus-stacking effort a waste of time, as pretty much only
my subject is of interest to me, unless there were some elements of the back/fore-ground that I likewise felt were important to add to the composition. So I do understand your point: why spend so much time "detailing" elements of a composition that don't matter at all?
For this reason, in most cases I would consider all the extra effort at producing a HDR image to be a neurotic obsessive/compulsive disorder on the part of the photographer (LOL), because it seems like an incredible pain the ass to process images in this way
And yet I also think some people might just be turned on to "the surreal effect" of HDR imaging, whether or not any of the highlighted details are actually "important" to the composition or not. In other words, it seems to me that some people are merely turned-on by the overall HDR "feel" more so than anything inherently valuable being detailed so extensively. So, even though I personally wouldn't waste my time doing this, I don't see anything to "hate" in it either. It's a simple matter of different strokes for different folks, and I have to admit that I sometimes think the effect is kinda cool too
However, HDR efforts outlined by Mike (Wolfnowl) as well as by the posted article by Alexandre Buisse make the most sense to me: trying to capture all the potenial range of a
wonderful image that "one click at one exposure setting" can't possibly capture. With certain scenes, I can definitely see the value in making this kind of photographic (and post-processing) effort, for essentially the same reasons as I focus-stack my macro shots, but they just do it for tones and colors too.
So I agree most images are simply not worth the effort ... same as I don't bother trying to focus-stack every macro shot I see either ... but if it floats some people's boats to do it with otherwise mundane subjects, it's their time to waste doing it
Jack
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