[Diederich]

Totally honest question here: can you be very specific about what caused these photos to be painful for you to look at? I have no formal photographic training but I have always taken a lot of pictures, and I've been told that some of them are good. I do know what HDR is, gleaned from various hacker news posts over the years.

What is painful about these photos, to you?

[Isamu]

It's funny, now it's called HDR (for high dynamic range) but really you are compressing the "dynamic range" to make details visible that otherwise would be washed out or too dark.

This has been a regular part of photography from the darkroom days, manipulating the exposure time, masking parts to selectively reduce exposure, "burning in" other parts. Especially with BW photography.

The sort of other-worldly crispness, details, and groomed highlights can be upsetting to some people. But it sets this type of photography apart from say, documentary images and instead tries for a kind of art.

Not everybody is familiar with this sort of photography.

[ska]

The "high dynamic range" refers to the input range, not the output range, so it isn't a misnomer as you suggest.

This also what separates it a bit from techniques like masking which don't change the underlying range available, but rather tweaking the exposure in an area. Dodging and burning are dark room techniques, which is a whole different kettle of fish.

As you note though, people used to do similar things with exposure bracketing in analog days - it's just a lot easier with digital.

Fundamentally you can get some pretty similar results with selective lighting. After all you are locally changing the effective represented photon density hitting your receptor, either way.

[Isamu]

> it isn't a misnomer as you suggest

Just saying HDR should refer to the process. The output photo, as you say, only has a normal dynamic range, compressed from the inputs.

[ska]

meh; It's an informative name that absolutely does refer to the process, and gives you some information.

Your preferred approach isn't objectively any better (all kinds of processes could result in higher dynamic range outputs, some of which are arguably "cheating").

So what we have is a reasonable choice between imperfect alternatives that are mostly equivalent - but that choice is made now and far better to get on with it than quibble about it.