With their meta-real look and high resolution, you’d be forgiven for thinking these photos were video game stills, but they’re not. The work of photographer Trey Ratcliff, who runs popular travel image site Stuck In Customs, these images achieve an altogether new aesthetic based on Ratcliff’s unique photographic process. Called High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, which Ratcliff defines as “a post-processing of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed,” Ratcliff imbues his images with the sense of awe and wonder one might feel when, say, that sun’s hanging low over the city at the end of an autumn day. And looking at his photos—which range from streaming light highways to serene Buddhist temples to beaches and beyond—you do get a sense of that kind of all-consuming majesty.It could be that this style of photography is not for you. It’s a far cry from the vérité style of Henri Cartier-Bresson or reportage, to be sure, but in the age of Photoshop, one might argue that digital manipulation is just as much a part of the creative process. This doesn’t always mean you’re distancing yourself from reality (although this technique wouldn’t work for war photography, for instance), instead Ratcliff is recreating the subjective experience of a time and place. As he says on his site, he wants to capture the way the mind remembers and maps the scene, representing the emotion of what a place felt like. If that means—ironically, perhaps—tinkering around with the image using Photomatix Pro and Photoshop well, who’s to fault him? After all, isn’t the camera a machine too, just like the computer? Rather than an interpretation, Ratcliff wants to relive the memory, and you could look at these photos as merging art photography with documentary to create something more representative of a certain type of grandiose visual experience.We’ve collected a few of his images in the slideshow above, but it doesn’t really do them justice, so go visit his site for his full portfolio. Also on the site is his Daily Photo along with a free HDR tutorial and Stuff You Need section if you want to go about creating your own versions. And below is his image—the only HDR one—that hangs in the Smithsonian Institution.
[via Kotaku]
Advertisement