A photographer (and the owner of the lodge at which I am staying) by the name of Neil showed me around Kaikoura today in what was ostensibly a photography workshop. While I hope to continue to become a better photographer over the course of my life, there is little about the technical side of photography that I do not understand, so the workshop was more of a tour. Neil took me to places I'd never have found myself, only being here for a day.

Neil sells his photos, which you can see on his site http://imagesabound.com/. His images are very saturated with color, and many of the recent photographs are HDR, which means that he took multiple exposures and combined them into one shot. I think this makes things look "cool," but for the past few years, I've shied away from the technique simply because it (usually) wildly misrepresents what the scene actually looked like. I've been into a more natural representation of a scene, though I think the population at large would find such an image more dull than one that exaggerates the beauty of a landscape.

Anyway, I've processed a couple images I took today in the way I would choose and then again in the way I'd imagine Neil would handle them. I've included one for direct comparison in this post. To get the Candyland version, I did several things to the shot:

1) I nudged the overall color contrast up a bit, so that the image gained some more distance between lights and darks.

2) Then I reigned in the highlights, so that they regained a bit more detail.

3) The shadows received a bump in brightness, revealing more detail in the darker portions of the image.

4) Next, I dove into the specific colors. I increased the luminance and saturation of green and teal, and I just increased the saturation of the yellows.

5) Finally, I applied a bit of overall sharpening to give it that extra pop and to cut through the haze that was present when I viewed the scene with my naked eye.

(Note: you can see both images in the "February 23rd" "New Zealand Photos" gallery.)

I can see why another's initial reaction would favor the more vibrant image, but I just can't make myself like it more. I see more beauty in the subtle color variations that I do the obvious ones.

P.S. On a completely unrelated note, we got pulled over by the cops today for speeding (using up the final remaining points on Neil's license, apparently), and as it turns out, New Zealand cops are very polite.