Hyper Reality

Along the same vein of the earlier post of ghosts in the shadows of under exposure, I recently came across an article on a new photo technology called high dynamic range imaging (HDRI). Without really knowing what dynamic range was, a little reading brought me to the shortened definition for dynamic range being the limits of light, detail, and shade or color a camera or other device can capture. For example the dynamic range for a digital camera is generally less than film photography and significantly less than the human eye. A digital photograph taken in very low light conditions will not have anywhere near the amount of detail compared to if we were standing next to the object viewing it ourselves because of the limited dynamic range of the camera. However enter the world of computing and big math, and apparently some boys back at the lab have come up with photographic computing HDRI software, "which allow a computer to overcome the limited dynamic range of a digital camera by selectively combining multiple exposures of the same scene in order to retain details even in low light conditions." (Wikipedia)

In my eyes the new HDRI images push the edge of photography into the realm of hyper-reality. They represent something well beyond what would be there if I was standing looking at these objects in real life, however are still anchored fully by the object. The HDRI pics are not computer generated cartoons or illustrations but rather a consolidation of images around Tokyo Japan taken at different times of the day and then combined by HDRI computing into a single image. The detail in low light is amazing to me. If you enjoy these, the rest of the 80 images can be viewed here Tokoyo HDRI, which were taken by Masata Ohta.