A book worth getting if you're into HDR

The world of photography has become a strange world: there are many photographers, like myself, who prefer to create their imagery straight from the world, to capture the essence within the original snapshot with minimal post-processing their final image; and there are just as many if not more who take the original image and turn it into something else. Where is the fine line when you have crossed from straight-up photography into 'art', when the photograph is no longer exactly what your eye could have seen? After all, even Ansel Adams, the patriarch of American photography, manipulated his film images into something spectacular and almost unworldly; but nobody would hesitate to call his work anything but photography.

I'll be the first to admit that I generally declare myself on the fence when it comes to HDR (high dynamic range imaging). With the advances in digital photography to create images far closer to film than ever before, combined with a sensitivity beyond most eyes, however, photographers began experimenting with their images and have created a new kind of art, HDR.

I consider HDR to be more art than pure photography, I admit, because it IS art. Most HDR photos are combined using several exposures to create images that range from eye-poppingly color-saturated to extreme resolutions/shadings that make your eyes and brain feel as if you're looking more at a three-dimensional artwork than a flat image. (Flickr is full of people's experimentations in HDR.)

Trey Ratcliff, who has an excellent HDR tutorial on his blog, Stuck In Customs, has now released a book about HDR, and it features plenty of his own very, very excellent HDR photography. If you're interested in the HDR artform, this book or his blog would be an ideal place to start your explorations.