Okay, now I’m just embarassed. I just heard about high dynamic range (HDR) photography from a NY Times article. I plead that it’s mostly just a trick and, hey, I primarily shoot slide film anyway.
So for others who haven’t heard of HDR photography, it’s a technical work around for one of the more difficult photographic problems – the problem of the dynamic range of film vs that of the eye. In a nutshell, the human eye has an enormous dynamic range. It can distinguish between two different very bright shades while simultaneously distinguishing between two very dark shades. It’s dynamic range, IIRC, is somewhere around 10. On the other hand, slide film and prints from print film have a dynamic range of 5, maybe 6. That doesn’t sound like much difference, except that this is a logarithmic scale.
This leads to the photography problem. The gorgeous scene that you photographed may not show up in your image unless the scene has a small dynamic range. Enter HDR. With HDR, you take multiple exposures. This ensures that you have a “good†exposure for each part of the scene. You then algorithmically combine the images to produce a meta-image which is well exposed across the entire scene.
The biggest problem I see with these images is that they wind up looking like Thomas Kincaid paintings. That said, I’ll probably play with this technique soon using CinePaint (a fork of the GIMP).
The magician represents the conscious mind. With focus on an idea or goal, the conscious mind sets into action these ideas and brings them forth to the material world. The magicians hands are stretched forth, one to the sky holding a wand, and the other pointing to the ground below. This is suggestive that as is “as above, so belowâ€. The table in front of him has all the tools to make this possible. The wand, cup, sword, and pentacle, which are representative of all the suits to the tarot cards. The mage has an undergarment of pure white, showing his pure wisdom and is held shut by the serpent around his waist. The outer garment is red, symbolic of desire and passion, which has no belt holding it shut so it can be removed if necessary. The flowers in the garden represent things as well. The red roses are symbolic of desires, and the white lilies represent pure thought, untainted by desire. This card is under the vibration of the number 1.
