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Find Your Passionette!

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” —Yogi Berra

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Dewitt Jones has been experimenting with HDR. This photograph of a seal in the Galápagos Islands has undergone a transformation beginning with the straight image (#1) through the tone-mapped version (#4).

You seem to have found your passion, Dewitt. I wish I could find mine!” It was the first line of an e-mail I received recently, and it shook me up. Reason #1: I could feel the pain of the writer looking for that one thing in their life that would overwhelm them with energy and love. Reason #2: They were right; I have found my passion, but it’s not photography.

In earlier times, when people apprenticed a trade and then plied that trade their entire lives, perhaps it was easier to imagine a life built around one single passion. But today? With the staggering amount of information and possibility we can access in seconds? I may be going out on a limb here, but in my opinion, not having an overwhelming passion in one’s life today is normal.

I, for one, am actually rather happy about this. Life is just way too big, juicy and wonder-filled to allow one discipline to be all-consuming for me. If I’m honest, I don’t have one passion; I have a thousand passionettes. Yes, I’m passionate about photography, but I’m also passionate about my family, keynote speaking, golf, moonrises, waves, sunlight, movies and Tommy Bahama shirts. It’s a very big list.

Even with my photography, it’s not one all-consuming passion. I’ve been passionate about Polaroid SX-70, photojournalism, mini-cameras, iPhone images, Velvia, blue/yellow polarizers, enhancing filters and infrared—another big list.

Right now HDR is my passion. High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI, or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a far greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image. These techniques usually involve the merging of multiple photographs taken at different exposures to create a high-bit-depth file. “Tone mapping” then can be used on the merged file to manipulate the enhanced shadow and highlight detail and produce images that look “normal” but with an extended dynamic range, or quite stylized and dramatic.

Photoshop tools like Shadow/Highlight and Adobe Camera Raw’s Recover/Fill Light/Clarity already allowed you to move in this direction with an image. Now, with programs like Photomatix Pro, a whole new look can be achieved. As I said, the proper way to create an HDR image is with multiple shots at different exposures. However, Photomatix also can create a tone-mapped image from one single exposure. Choose the right image, and the results can be rather astounding.

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