Mikhail Tal wrote:
DPR published an article showing some images taken by Carsten Krieger in bad weather that they deemed "great photography." I say the photographs were generally terrible because they looked exactly like any other amateur snapshots taken in bad weather: underexposed, poorly lit, and sorely lacking in contrast and saturation. Here is an example from the article, including Krieger's own caption:
Digital technology has made capturing good images in bad weather much easier. To the naked eye the sky in this scene was a bland grey. Using the HDR technique and applying a digital tonal contrast filter brought out detail and colour.Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 24mm TS-E, F14, 1/13 sec, HDR (+/- 3 stops), tripod.
Notice how out of touch with reality this guy is. He's acting like this is some great image when in fact it is terribly bland regardless of what he did to it. He used about $5k worth of gear and claimed to use fancy processing, yet he's still produced something that looks like an amateur snap. All he had to do was look at the image histogram to see how poorly exposed it is, making a mockery of the term high dynamic range.
To back up my scathing criticism of his inferior work, I snagged the low-res image he posted in the article and spent about two minutes making some really simple edits in ACR to produce something that actually looks like a legitimate professional photograph:
What do you know, an image that actually has some legitimate dynamic range and color in it. Again, this isn't a brag by any means, it's a trivial adjustment that anybody with even a basic knowledge of ACR could have made. I am calling out Carsten Krieger - and DPR - because they have posted several articles by him and I find his photography to be grossly overrated for reasons such as what I have pointed out here. Just another overgeared rich guy who thinks his photos are professional just because he threw an HDR process on that he doesn't even know how to use correctly.
So please vote for whose image you prefer and explain why.
