Reminds me of a surreal cartoon and please do not take it as negative criticism.

I love it. The OTT HDR is completely in keeping with the subject matter. Very good indeed.

Nice one with tons of details. Probably it's not even photography on this level but digital art or something. I'm looking forward to see some of the others.

Bill: I can't think of any reason I'd think that was a criticism.

Tim: thanks.

E y e V i s i o n: I've just finished looking through them, and two of them nearly work, but not quite. If I get some time over the next day or so I'll re-shoot them both.

I know sometimes it works for some images and not for others but the over the top treatment you have given this image works for me.

Good in a scary sorta way - not to my taste as you know, but glad to see you post again - thought some major disaster had befallen you. Glad to hear you're busy - do I smell a new lens ;-)

Outstanding image. I just can't stop looking at it. Great tension, color and texture.

I like this image - the sky is very imposing. It's a great contrast to the stuffed animals that hang there innocently.

The only critique I might offer is the uneven luminance in some areas - parts are light and parts are dark where one would expect it to be the same (see the red sign and beach behind it and the onion dome). With Photomatix tonemapping I've seen this happen when the local contrast is set very high with a low "smoothing" value, as well as when the luminance slider is set to a relatively high value. It seems Photomatix isn't quite smart enough to apply tonemapping smoothly in certain scenarios. You, being well-versed in Photoshop, could probably figure out a better way, but one way to get around this "uneven-ness" is to tonemap a less intense version and blend it with a mask in the uneven areas.

Wow...this photo is great piece of art!

Hey,
beautiful photos!!! Really great shots and very very nice motives!

I would like to invite you to http://www.wpdb.de and upload some of your photos, so that others can use them as wallpaper and enjoy your photo every time they look on there screen!
It would be great if you take a look. Its a complete free service for everyone! (You can also put a link in your profile, so that this link will be published next to every published photo!)

Best Regards,
Steve

Jennifer: no, not even a sniff of one :-)

Dave: I know what you mean about the uneven illumination, and how to avoid it, but in this instance it doesn't trouble me; i.e. the scene is already surreal so I don't think the 'lighting' detracts from the image as a whole.

Perfect backdrop for a videogame of some sort.

Hello David,

I don't if you have heard of games like Quake or Doom. When I look at this photo, which is simply stunning, I feel like I am in middle of a game and I want to take the path around this place and find something. The teddy bears have such a nice 3d look to them that I want to grab them. Did u intentionally colorize the yellow bears?

Great direction, David

Mayuresh: I used to play Doom quite a lot, and am also familiar with Quake, so no what you mean. As for the bears: it's not so much that I colourised them, rather I partially desaturated the rest of the image. The net result is the same though.

I want to hate this because of the clouds, which are just too much for me. But you did such a beautiful job with the booth, the pier and the buildings in the background that I kinda love it.

definately looks like a scene from Max Payne, however i thoroughly enjoy the subject

best picture fucking ever

I'm in a minority of one here, I hate this. It's like a million other HDR monstrosities I've seen on flickr. Search for Kriss Kross and you'll see what I mean. Please lose the HDR bug soon Dave and get back to your usual great material.

Oh yeaaaaaah. Looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove this. In case you didn't figure it out, that was an HDR high five. :)) this scared the hell out of me and i loved that it did like i love watching spooky movies under a big blanket with a big bowl of popcorn.

Wicked!

Magnificent! So overboard it works. I'm with Mayuresh here; it's like seeing a still from Quake or some other shoot 'em up.

David,

How do you decide if a series of 7 or 9 photos work as an HDR image or not? Do you process them all or you know what to see on the raw files? I'm just curious...

Im guessing high contrast, low smoothing and luminosity cranked up ... just a guess :)
Im not really a high speaker of these types of HDRI, but sometimes they work - think this is one of those that works. At least as art.
Im not happy with the dome part of the building, i think it blends in too much with the sky. I like the smile on the teddy bear with boxing gloves on and also i took me a while to realize theres a person in there. My Polorrose plugin does not pick up his face, but it tells me theres a face in the sky ....

it's overly done and not even pleasant to look at, can't understand why so many people love it.

Looks like a dream I had. Very powerful image. Amazing!

somtimes I hate HDR ... It's not cool !!

Thanks all.

Mad.Photo.World: mid smoothing and luminosity cranked up, so you're not far off :-)

E y e V i s i o n: I tend to shoot seven frames using auto-bracketing and then use enough of them to make sure that I've covered the dynamic range of the original scene; i.e. no blocked shadows in the lightest shot and no clipped highlights in the darkest.

yue: the great thing about photography (or any other art form) is that it's subjective; i.e. people like it because they do, or not.

Ramyar: not cool? Why not?

Oh, and I do have one more to put up from the same trip, but doubt I'll manage to get it finished this evening. If I don't I'll post it tomorrow.

awesome and surreal. I simply adore this hdr shot!

Very dynamic scene you have there, the HDR makes it so surreal! Great work.

This gives a great impression of the unseasonal north winds we've been getting this week - send it in to the BBC weather blog!
Good use of the saturation tool in Photomatix also; without that faded look it wouldn't work as well, IMO.

Ugh - very garish. 'Ordinary Beauty' is the way to go!!

@minh I looked at this and immediately thought "American McGee's Alice."

It really does look computer-generated (not just processed), especially the safety belt thinger on the left.

I personally find that this is taking hdr too far, and always do once a photo has lost touch with reality, no matter if there were abstract intentions. I'd rather see this effect created with paint than pixels.

Always easier to critise than complement so I apolgise for not offering my opinion each time I've been blown away by your shots...
http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/archives/0805252039.php
...this I can imagine seeing with my eyes but could never capture with a lens.

[...] Unmanipulated "straight" photography can hardly be claimed to dominate the modern uses of photography. Consider, for instance, the following photographic practices. One is Soviet photography of the Stalinist era. All published photographs
were not only staged but also retouched so heavily that they can hardly be called photographs at all.

[...] The logic of the digital photograph is one of historical
continuity and discontinuity. The digital image tears apart the net of semiotic codes, [...] modes of display, and patterns of spectatorship in modern visual culture -- and, at the same time, weaves this net even stronger. The digital image annihilates photography while solidifying, glorifying and immortalizing the photographic. In short, this logic is that of photography after photography. (Manovich)

http://free.art.pl/fotografie/manovich/digital_photo.html

*Personally, HDR images do not work for me. I've tried them myself and concluded that they don't speak my visual language. That said, the future may well make us more accepting.

Wonderful processing, you have really made a nice thing look very evil!! :-)

Thanks all.

Beautiful colors and processing. Great work !

Sorry David but I find HDR like this awful. I think it utterly destroys the shot. I generally love your work but this I don't. Sorry.

Matt: there's no need to apologise, these aren't to everyone's taste. What I could add though, is that without this technique there wouldn't have been a shot - all you would have been either a well illuminated kiosk and a blown out sky, or a correctly exposed sky and a mass of shadow in the foreground.

very cool! Love the color treatment.

this has been taken too far for my liking.

Another fantastic image. Well done! Looks like half illustration and half photo. Love it.

Hi Dave, I don't comment too often but I visit regularly however when I see a shot that stands out above the rest of your work (which can't be easy as it's all superb) I tend to let you know and I just love this shot. Yes it is HDR'd to death but it just looks fab! I think the subject and location add to the shot and those bright colours against such a terrifying sky really adds some mood like a good horror film.

kidof sinister and scary... great emotion.... i need to learn how to do this..

wow, amazing image! its whimsical meets dramatic ... love it!