Thanks Christian!

To me the real skill with HDR is in using it subtly. So many great tonemapped images pass completely under the radar, with people just seeing them as nice photos, and having no idea how they were arrived at.

Having said that, I don't object to artistic use of more extreme HDRs, just look at Trey Ratcliff's work. It's very obvious that the shots are not 'natural', but they are extremely beautiful, and capture the feel of a place more so than the exact look.

What I have no time for is when people try to use HDR to make a poor shot interesting. It just doesn't work. Garbage in garbage out! A tonemapped image needs to be every bit as well composed, focused, and exposed as any other shot. Trying to use HDR/tonemapping to make a poor shot great is a lost cause! Those kinds of 'because I can' HDRs give the whole process an un-deserved bad name. Because they are so obviously awful, everyone notices they are HDRs, and conflate those terrible out-liers with the whole field!

I like to think of it like photoshop, which was also once controversial and hated like HDR/tonemapping is now. Badly photoshopped shots are REALLY obvious, but well processed shots aren't at all obvious. This skews the field, and people think that all photoshop work results in the garbage they hate. They think they hate Photoshop, when in fact they hate bad taste and poor skill.

Bart.