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Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi’s funeral in India in 1948 and the last (1949) stage of the Chinese Civil War. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the Maoist People’s Republic. He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was falling to the communists. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch.

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from the 17th century Cardinal de Retz: “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif” (“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: “Photographier: c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait” (“Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact”).

Both titles came from publishers. Tériade, the Greek-born French publisher whom Cartier-Bresson idolized, gave the book its French title, Images à la Sauvette, which can loosely be translated as “images on the run” or “stolen images.” Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment. Margot Shore, Magnum’s Paris bureau chief, did the English translation of Cartier-Bresson’s French preface.

“Photography is not like painting,” Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative,” he said. “Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

Cartier-Bresson held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in the Louvre in 1955.

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52 Great Inspirational subjects for photography

The photographs added to each week are mine which I’ll try and update from time to time.

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I must admit I fall in with those who love the effect! I like the extra detail, and the photos seem to jump out from those standard exposures they sit next to in my libraries. For that reason I decided I’d post a bit of a beginners guide on what tools to use and how to generate the kind of HDR images I produce. Everyone will have their own preferred methods and there are probably hundreds of other tools out there, some better and some worse than those I use, feel free to experiment as much as possible. I’d strongly encourage it but for those of you new to HDR photography I hope that by the end of this guide you’ll be able to start producing countless amounts of superb HDR shots.

Getting the HDR photographs

HDR or High Dynamic Range photography basically means generating a single image from several different exposures. First of all you need to take a minimum of 3 images (there are ways to do HDR photos with a single shot and I’ll discuss that in another article) each at different exposures, your camera will probably be able to help you with this. Go to your settings and look for AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing) this should allow you to set the camera to take 3 exposures at predefined bracketed exposures. To start with I would use +/- 2 stops to give me a correctly exposed shot, one -2 exposure and one +2 exposure,this is a good practice to get into this if storage of your images isn’t a problem as you’ll often find that an under or over exposed image can sometime look better than a correctly exposed shot. Once you have the 3 shots import them onto your PC/Laptop and we’ll move onto the basic processing.

Processing / Editing / Merging

For the image processing and HDR merging including the tone mapping I use a program called Photomatix which is a paid for program (I think there maybe free alternatives out there post in comments if you know of any and can recommend them) you can pick it up for $39 stand alone but I’d advise you to shell out the extra $60 for the pro version if you have adobe lightroom installed for the simple reason that the plugin for lightroom is a huge time saver! I’d say it has probably tripled my productivity in HDR processing. Once you have the program installed its quite simple to use. Open it up and you’ll be greeted with a workflow (see image)

If you fancy it click on the Tutorial which will guide you through the process otherwise if you want to jump straight in click Generate HDR image then click on Browse… and navigate to your 3 images.

Next you’ll be greeted with a screen which required you to select a few different options for when the photos are merged. Align source images can be quite useful when you might have shot hand held instead of using a tripod (highly recommended that you use a tripod while shooting your 3 exposures). Reduce chromatic aberrations, speaks for itself, default is ticked and I suggest that you leave it this way. Reduce noise also leave ticked unless you fancy that grainy effect. Attempt to reduce ghosting artifacts can be a useful tool when any elements of your photo may be moving, I sometime find you have to play around with the 2 types and between normal and high to get the desired effect but it has saved a few otherwise unusable shots. Once you are done here click Ok to view the HDR.

The first time you see the HDR shot it doest look anything special, that’s because it hasn’t been tone mapped yet! Click in Tone Mapping and watch the image jump to life with a whole new dynamic range.

Now that you have generated the HDR photo you can tweak the image using the various settings along the left hand side panel. As with most forms of editing there is no hard and fast rule as to what settings to apply, each image requires its own individual processing and as always your style will be subjective, I would suggest having a play with the sliders and various types of light smoothing until you achieve your desired effect.

That pretty much it Process and save the image (file save as) and you are done. Check out the free trial of the photomatix trial and get processing if you like it buy it and you wont have the watermark. Please post me links in the comments section to any images you have produced following reading this article I’d love to have a look.

Tips

1. Always try and use a tripod where possible. Remember you are shooting and merging 3 exposures and the over exposed image will no doubt require a long shutter speed than the normal exposure so both camera shake and movement in the 3 images is highly likely.
2. Shoot Raw format. I would recommend doing this all the time anyway but especially in HDR imaging. When processing your images in your raw program try not to alter or correct the exposure of the image, restrict it to minimal corrections in white balance, colour tones, detail and noise corrections.
3. Not every scene suits HDR processing, when I was starting out before I had read countless books and articles on the subject I often found that certain shots I thought would look great in HDR ended up in the recycle bin and others I took and processed by chance added a whole new dimension to an otherwise boring mundane photograph. Its a bit hit and miss is HDR photography but worse case scenario you end up with 3 different regular exposures to work from if the HDR processing doesn’t suit the shot.

Recommended reading:

1. Mastering High Dynamic Range Photography – Michael Freeman
2. 19 Beautiful Examples of HDR done right – James Brandon
3. Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography – Ferrell McCollough

A few of my HDR shots:

more of my HDR work here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tuckerphotography/sets/72157611683788005/

Self Portraits – 7 Tips for Going Beyond the Basics

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