Introduction</u>
Hello and welcome to the inaugural #
HDR-Club News article!
High Dynamic Interviews aims solely to bring you the crowd favourites and exposing their trade secrets!
Now that we've perked you up... We'll get right down into what we've come here for!
Joining us on this very incredible virgin interview is none other than the all talented and HDR-Skilled !
morbidthegrim 
a.k.a Mike Shaw!!!
Let's put our hands together to welcome him!
Interview</b>
Hey Mike, and thanks for joining us on this session of High Dynamic Interviews!Hello
Thanks for taking the time to do this and considering me for it.
It's a pleasure! Now, since most of our friends here would know you through your amazing gallery, we're gonna zoom right into the focus of HDR! So for the HDR-Dummies out there...
Define HDR for the community!Nice easy question
High Dynamic Range, does what its says on the can really
It’s a process that allows you pick up and play with details that have never been seen before in photography, it allows you play with different ranges of exposure within an image not normally seen by the human eye and thus you can drag details out of an image and show. The process though is only as good as the user
Seeing how your HDR works have drawn much attention, how can one improve or begin their journey into HDR?One of the things I say to a lot of people that ask me is never use HDR as the be all and end all of your image, its should be used as an enhancement and not a replacement, HDR will not improve a poor image, a poor image is bad no matter what so if you are not happy with what you have from the camera, walk away from it. I know from my own experience that when artists first stumble upon HDR they go nuts, by trying for the wow factor you can end up overdoing things. Then the end result just looks odd, you get attention for your image but it’s the wrong attention. You need to get asked “Is this HDR?” Once that happens you know you have the balance right as people suspect it has been used but its subtle enough that they have to question it.
Well said Mike! People often debate on what the right technique is, or if there's a staple. What techniques do you use for HDR?
This is always hard for me to answer and I do get notes on a regular basis asking the same question. What baffles a lot of people is the fact I don’t use any presets/templates in any programs I use. I do have a couple but I simply don’t use them. My reason is if you use a preset/templates then you are going to condemn your images always looking the same and for me that’s not what its about. I once watched a well known member of dA but all his works followed the same track and for me that’s dull. I treat each image differently, yes it takes longer but I feel the end result works better for me.
I use so many different plug ins and programs sometimes it gets silly, at the moment its not unusual for me to take an image through either Photmatix Pro3 or Dynamic-photo HDR, then through either CS3 or 4(still that used to 4 yet ) then through Lightroom before going back to CS3, then on top of that I have god knows how many plug ins in CS3. What I try to do though is make each change at each stage as subtle as I can, its not the one big change such as tone mapping that makes an image more rather a combination of little subtle changes that builds up and image.
One bit of advice I can give, when tone mapping your best tool is the micro smoothing slider, so many images turn out looking noisy, too dark and harsh on the eyes, use this and take the slider up, too many people accept noise as an issue within HDR, you should not as you can do something about it, it just takes work!
Brilliant mate. Any tips for other photographers to improve and step up their game?
Try things, never be scared of having a go, you have nothing to lose and in this day and age of digital photography its not like you are losing anything such as a roll of film. If it does not work you simply step back or delete. Remember that you have to get the image right from the onset, that’s starts with you putting your eye into the view finder. Before you press the button, look around, what will be in your shot? Its there a relationship between the foreground and background, is there something there you don’t what? Cab it be moved or can you take it out of the frame? Is there something that needs to be in the shot? Take fewer images, sounds daft but be more particular about what you take. Taking 10 good images opposed to 100 mediocre ones will net you a better result. Most photographers only use a small % of what they take, if I get a good shot out of 10 then that’s a really good percentage.
That's a lot to say! So hey, before you take your leave, share your dream in photography with us!
To exhibit more, I have been published a few times but not within my own country and to be able to live comfortably by doing this for a living, who could not love that
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Dynamic Features</u>
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An absolutely well shared experience of Mike Shaw, !morbidthegrim
We hope you learnt a great deal from the pro and look forward to seeing some wicked HDR!
If you wish to learn more about HDR or join the community, do hop by #HDR-Club 
and knock on our door!
This High Dynamic Interview was brought to you by `Timothy-Sim
Sta.sh
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this article so it reaches more deviants 
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