Vogsphere

I don't know if Andy Warhol ever envisioned how thin that fifteen minutes would actually be sliced with the coming of the world wide web and self-publishing via blogs.

Last week we got a note via our Flickr account from an Alex Walker asking if we minded if he used a couple of our pictures in a 'how to article' he was writing up to highlight the HDR function in Photoshop CS2. His name looked a little familiar so I looked him up and it turns out he writes design articles for SitePoint.com in Australia. SitePoint is well known in web design circles, so it was somewhat flattering to be asked for the use of some of my photos. Heck, even I've heard of SitePoint. Though truth be told, my photos were used in an example of how to use Photoshop to improve a photo before it could be published. Oh well.

If you're like I was at the beginning of this process, and you don't know anything about Photoshop, and much less the HDR function, here is a complete explanation. My friend Chris at work clued me in with a more simplified description. Digital cameras are not able to capture all of the range of colours that our eyes can sense in a scene. A digital camera using different exposure settings can capture different ranges of colours in the same scene. Photoshop's HDR function can digitally combine multiple images of the same scene at different exposures to produce a single image with a much broader dynamic range - making the image in effect "more realistic" in that it more closely approximates what our eyes actually "see".