phenomenal wave photos

[spelt with a t]

here

[K C]

I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours out in the ocean. Not to knock the photographer, but it looks like photoshop altering, HDR or layering with silver added. It just does not look real, I don't like it.

[spelt with a t]

Not sure why he would lie about it if it were a manip? It's not mentioned on his site, and people who knew what to look for would surely find out.

[John S.]

Where does it say the images have no software manipulation at all? They look altered, but I figure all photogs change a little something.

[spelt with a t]

It says he uses a combination of lenses and shutter speeds and mentions lighting. Is it customary to include "digital enhancement" in there? I don't know where the line is between "post-image processing" and manipulation.

[Nick Gatel]

The pictures look like surealistic liquid metal. Probably post editing. To me no different than using a filter, short or long F-stops, long exposures, or converting color to B&W to gain the desired mood/theme, etc.

[Greg Mihalik]

I believe HDR would be impossible with something this dynamic.

The multiple exposures to bracket the lighting requires a stationary scene.

[Nico .]

I think they're nice photos. They're crisp and have interesting lighting and shadows.

I don't know anything about this particular photographer, but it's become pretty customary to use some "slider" adjustments in editing software like Lightroom to manipulate exposure, shadows, highlights, sharpness, saturation, etc. after the fact. From there, folks can do other, more "involved" edits like layering, HDR processing, etc. In a lot of ways, the edits folks do with software now aren't that different from what skilled photographers in the past would sometimes do through the use of various filters, lenses or in the darkroom when exposing the film and creating prints.

Also just wanted to clarify it is actually possible to create an HDR-like photo with a single exposure. You would first make additional copies of the original image and then overexpose some at different stops and underexpose others at different stops. You could then import all of the differently exposed versions of the original into your HDR software and go through the normal steps from there.

More interesting to me is the likelihood that these photos are not of giant, powerful waves but instead of small shorebreak waves, maybe only a foot or two high. Here's a couple (albeit not very spectacular) examples of similar shorebreak waves I shot one evening while walking my dog.

I really like Clark Little's wave photos. He lives on Oahu and places himself in the midst of the shorebreak to get incredible "in the tube" photos over dry sand. Takes some skill and some nerve to sit tight in the midst of all this.

[Nick Gatel]

We should ask him how he keeps condensation out of his camera ;-)

[spelt with a t]

Nico, you are right. From his About page: "Pierre has found small waves to be more interesting to him as they show details and transparency that are not visible on huge waves." Thank for the link to Little's page. I like some of those a lot.

[Greg Mihalik]

"Also just wanted to clarify it is actually possible to create an HDR-like photo with a single exposure. "

"HDR-like" – Sure, you can burn and dodge.

But no chip has the dynamic range of nature. If you don't get the brightest and the darkest there is not much you can do. The sun lit rock will be white and the shadows will be black, and maybe the stuff in the middle will be OK. By capturing +/- 2 stops, or more, through multiple exposures and then mapping/merging you Can get the details in the shadow, as well as the grain on the rock.

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