It’s amazing what a difference four years make when it comes to photography. The images from my Iceland trip in 2010 were filled with what I consider now overly done HDR post-processing and although I never really went over-board with HDR (no cartoon-like images from me), now when I look back at those times I wish I would have paid more attention when actually taking the photographs. But like with anything else, you live and you learn. The one thing I’ve learnt from those times is that you don’t always have to be able to see every single patch of grass for a photograph to be an interesting one. You don’t have to have scenes full of contrast just to suggest a dramatic landscape.
When I posted these two images (here and here) of Gullfoss, I was fairly happy with them. Now looking back at those (particularly the second one) and at the image above I am so much more satisfied with a simpler image (from a post-processing point of view). I took a greater care when I was making this photograph, using a heavy ND filter to attain a longer exposure and a graduated ND filter to reduce the amount of light in the sky and balance the overall scene. The moral of this is that quality glass always beats Photoshop. What do you think? Do you still like HDR images (or did you ever like them)?