Royce Howland, currently resides in Calgary, Alberta. By day he helps corporations do innovative software development, and alternates between corporate IT and commercial product development.

Although relatively new to photography, his intense interest in HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography and his recent article at Nature Scapes Net, has brought him to the forefront of this emerging technique. His interest in HDR was prompted by an article at Michael Reichmann’s Luminous Landscapes website, and recognizing the potential of this new genre, he began using HDR to augment his landscape photography.

He is a moderator at Nature Scapes net where his work is highly praised by nature photographers worldwide.

Many consider him to be the best in the world at applying HDR to nature photography.

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Lockhart:

You are known primarily for your work in HDR. What prompted your interest in HDR?

Howland:

“Yeah, HDR — High Dynamic Range photography. I won’t describe it here; readers unfamiliar with it can find that elsewhere. But I guess I am known for HDR technique because of the big article published at NatureScapes.Net back in July 2006. There wasn’t a lot of reference material on HDR imaging for photographers at the time. Whereas there was (and is) growing interest in the technique. Most people were just getting a hold of some of the early tools and playing with them, seeing what they could create. But you have to like tinkering to do that, and some people wanted a more structured introduction to learning about the technique. So the article came along at a good time.

“Ultimately of course I hope to be better known as a guy that produces some darn good photographs, regardless of the technique employed. But it was the desire to produce photographs in a certain way that drew me to HDR in the first place, so it’s a related thing.

“I started “serious” photography as a so-so bird photographer, an extension of being a birder. But as I spent more time outdoors I began to become more & more aware of and interested in the land itself — and to the light on the land. As a friend once said while we joked around while waiting for Moose in Jasper, “the landscape is just what’s behind my subjects”. But for me the background became the main subject. I started trying to photograph it with my Canon DSLR. With straight shooting and throwing a bit of filter work in and some early Photoshop technique, I found I just wasn’t getting where I wanted to go. The light was not coming through. Especially as I started experimenting with wide field of view photography and stitched panoramas that pulled in more and more contrast across the scene. I needed something more than just basic exposure techniques to handle what was going on.

“This is not really new or unique, and photographers for decades have had the same issues and adopted all kinds of creative approaches, tools and techniques. My take early on was to realize the two different sides of the coin — capturing the light vs. developing it. (A la the Ansel Adams quote, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it”.) I would hear people say “I want to get it right in the camera”. I don’t debate anybody’s individual style choices, but for me the camera is not right… the final image that shows the creative expression I wanted to show is what’s right. I would also hear people say, “I want to be in the field, not sitting in front of the computer”. Again, that’s a personal style choice… but I’m goal oriented. If I have to sit in front of the computer (or, if I was shooting film, spend hours in the chemical darkroom) to get the creative expression I want, then that’s what I do. The camera is a tool but it’s not the only tool, and it has limits to what it can do. Photography is an end-to-end process.

“So I was drawn strongly towards the photographic tradition that emphasizes creative expression through development of the image. But I found a DSLR just wasn’t capturing enough for me to be able to develop with, especially in conditions of challenging lighting across wide fields of view that so often appealed to me. There were other workflow issues too as I said, and I could have made incremental improvements to a lot of them. But I was fishing around for something different.

“Around that time while visiting the Luminous Landscape website, I came across an early review of the HDR capability that had come out in Photoshop CS2. The Adobe software controls looked rudimentary but one thing about Michael Reichmann’s description of HDR excited me. And that was the idea of capturing the entire light on the scene, getting it into a coherent single image, and then having tools that could work to develop the image. To me this had immediate positive implications for the “take a photograph” and “make a photograph” sides of the coin. What if I could capture the whole scene with high fidelity and then develop it freely towards my ideal? That seemed really exciting and not something that was just a digital revamp of existing chemical darkroom techniques, nor a minor incremental upgrade of some piece of gear.

“As I see it, working from a single, coherent capture of all of the light on the scene is a fundamentally different thing than trying to splice together bits and pieces of differently exposed regions using GND’s and masked Photoshop image blends… and then further possibly having to smooth over all the resulting “seams” with yet more work to blend the boundaries where different exposure values come together. Pragmatically there’s only so much work you’re prepared to do unless you’re completely obsessed. Indeed, in the case of GND filters, we have gotten somewhat used to seeing hard or soft transitions in the resulting image, place we know the line in the grad filter cut across. In a lot of scenes of course you won’t see these transitions because the scene lends itself to the filter’s limited geometry. But in many scenes the transitions are there if you look for them. That’s neither good nor bad, it just is. Many tool choices create side-effects (including HDR, I readily admit).

“HDR is not magic, and the big limitation that our monitors and prints are not HDR capable is not something to trivialize. But despite that it seemed like a real “wow” moment to me to realize I could start with a high fidelity capture of the scene and then apply creative controls in a way that was both less mechanically “cut and paste” oriented and more oriented towards a seamless “look” with something I think of as a kind of integrity of tonality. I’d be able to focus more on creative expression. Well, I’m glossing over a lot of details here obviously.

“It’s a pretty ambitious goal, and not entirely met with the early versions of HDR tools nor even those of today. But it’s coming along. Adopting HDR technique into my workflow lets me do some things that I find very satisfying. My style is to be subtle and not overpowering with the technique, striving to produce images that look natural and very much photorealistic, while at the same time tickling the senses with a richness and detail that would be tough to achieve otherwise in a lot of cases. I’m getting things done with a reduced level of mechanical effort and improved visual effect that I find really useful to the end result, the more so as the technique becomes less evident.

“We’re still in the really early days, I think HDR tools and improvements in dynamic range handling across the board are going to dominate more & more research and development in photography for the next several years. I’m pretty keen to see where it goes because it’s all about opening our photographic window onto the world wider & wider and giving creative expression more elbow room.”

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Lockhart

You have written some excellent articles about HDR, may we link to one of them? Which one is your best?

Howland:

“LOL! That’s a tough one. Not being flippant, but my best articles on this subject have not even been written yet. The photographer Man Ray once said, “Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.” While my early focus was technique and the “how”, I very much want to push towards inspiration. That’s where the best things are going to come from.

“I have some written some new things about HDR, and hope to do more, trying to get to the creative side. So far none of that material is public anywhere yet. So for now, aside from my anecdotal comments on places like NatureScapes.Net and the email list at hdr-photography.com, the big article from 2006 is the main linkable thing.”

http://www.naturescapes.net/072006/rh0706_1.htm

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Lockhart:

Which of your works do you consider to be the best you have done using the HDR workflow? May I link to that photograph?

Howland:

“I’ll give you a couple of my current favorites. They show the difference in high-contrast vs. low-contrast scenes, both of which are circumstances where I apply HDR but for somewhat different reasons.

“The above low-contrast scene is a moody sunset morning on a Darwin Wiggett workshop I attended in September of this year, up in David Thompson Country. The clouds were heavy, the light was breaking through a tiny hole and selectively under-lighting some areas of the sky. The wind was gusting, stuff was blowing around, and the water wasn’t calm so the reflection wasn’t there at all. In the view shown here, it’s not a blazing, glorious mountain sunrise. But for me it was evocative, full of rich, dark tones and detailed textures in the rock faces, trees and blowing grasses. While keeping the hint of glorious light and subtle color in the sky, I really wanted to dig out the dark mood in a way that could be visually seen and appreciated at a detailed level, not just let it all turn to muddy tones as could happen in many approaches to digital capture of the scene. (How well we have learned that digital cameras are not at their best in the shadow tones!) HDR helped with this.

“This high-contrast scene was shot in Cornwall this past summer, during a brief break in the torrential rains that poured over the UK for weeks on end. I’m standing in a sort of open-topped slot canyon affair that at high tide is totally inundated by the tide. Right now the tide is low, but coming in. It’s getting towards sunset, still with strong light out there, flaring off the clouds and the wet rocks in front of the slot. The side light really tries to blow the highlights on the right while sending the left into deep murk with no detail. This is a classic HDR situation, and the technique really helped me pull out a result that preserves the gritty, contrasty detail of the bright rock faces while taming the water and sky and putting some subtle tones into the heavy shadows. And the image of course shows that HDR can be used in B&W photography… in some ways I think HDR is an even stronger fit with B&W work than with color. In color, lack or care or deliberate intention can mess with both hue and saturation. That’s less of a concern in B&W except insofar as you want to filter colors to produce good contrast for the B&W rendition.”

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Lockhart:

What is the most difficult part of the HDR workflow?

Howland:

“I think there are two difficult areas for most people. The first is in really visualizing the end result that is desired, and backing up from there to shape the capture & development process to produce that end result. This is more difficult than some other techniques because you can’t necessarily see in your mind how the normal exposures are going to combine together and then be processed in software to produce the final print. In comparison it is much easier to just fire away, pump the images through some tools and take whatever comes out. You can do some cool, interesting, even arresting work that way but it’s pretty random. And it’s more determined by the vision of the tool developers than by one’s own vision. For me, and I think for many photographers, there is a breakthrough point when you have mastered the tools to the level where they are sublimated within your creative process and you know how & why using them a certain way is going to give you a certain result. Looking at the scene, you can clearly appreciate what result you can get and want to get… and then drive everything towards that goal. It’s not luck, it’s not random, and it’s not just the output of a piece of gear or software running on full auto. Of course things don’t always work, but anybody who never produces a failure isn’t pushing too hard on anything.

“The second hard part is related to the first and that is that the tools actually get in our way as often as not. In order to master the process to get your end result, you’re constantly fighting things that don’t smoothly flow and support what you’re trying to do. You’re hacking, you’re experimenting, you’re working around limitations, and you’re doing a lot of trial & error because your tools don’t directly connect to the qualitative results you want. All the time you’re trying not to get distracted by this static and keep your focus on the creative goal that you’re shooting for. Sometimes if you can’t clearly see how to go A, then B, then C, then D, it can be frustrating and you wonder if you’re just wasting your time.

“All I can say to anybody who hits these issues is, keep at it if you want the results, and you will get past the frustrations. Things with the tool support have already gotten much better in the 2 years I’ve been doing serious HDR work, and they’re only going to keep improving. For me it definitely has been worth it already.”

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Lockhart:

What equipment is absolutely essential in doing HDR?

Howland:

“Very little is absolutely essential, but some things are certainly helpful if you want to make your life easier. A good digital camera that shoots clean, noise-free exposures with a flexible auto-exposure bracket mode. My Canon 5D only does 3 frames in AEB, which I typically use to cover the range of -2 to +2 EV. That’s often not enough. I’d really like at least 7 frames, covering a much wider dynamic range, such as is available on the top Canon or Nikon bodies. But even a simple point & shoot camera that can fire off a 3-shot AEB sequence will get you in the game.

“AEB is important because aligning the images together is harder for the software to do the more movement there is from one image to the next. So ideally you want to crank off the multiple exposures in one quick burst with no delays or camera movement in between. For the same reason, it’s very helpful to have a stable tripod and head, a remote cable release, mirror lockup mode on the camera to reduce mirror slap in DSLR bodies (P&S cameras don’t have this issue), etc.

“After that you’ll need some software to do the processing. We’ve got quite a few choices now. Freeware like Picturenaut, popular commercial applications like Photomatix Pro (which is my workhorse), HDR-friendly stitching tools like Autopano Pro (also a workhorse for me), even Photoshop itself since CS2 and CS3. There are many others too. Christian Bloch’s website has a bunch of capsule summaries of many of the common tools. (By the way, Christian also has a good HDR book available, with some content co-authored by folks like Uwe Steinmueller who are doing some creative work with HDR.)”

http://www.hdrlabs.com/tools/links.html

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Lockhart:

While HDR is becoming popular, are there fundamental skills that a photographer should develop prior to attempting HDR?

Howland:

“Nothing special is needed, really. You do need to know how to control the exposure settings on your camera. Don’t just shoot it in full automatic mode because it will probably change settings on you that shouldn’t be changed. And it helps to know how to take multiples sharp shots in a row that will align really well.

“Picking the exposure sequence is something that beginning HDR experimenters may have questions about. Ferrell McCollough has a really good little tutorial on this:

http://beforethecoffee.wordpress.com/bracketing-number-of-images/

“That’s about it. With some basic skills you can move quickly beyond technique into the creative part, which is where all the fun is!”

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Lockhart:

Was there anyone (i.e. other photographers) who influenced your work, and what was it about his or her work that inspired you?

Howland:

“It seems almost cliché but there’s no way to avoid mentioning Ansel Adams given the style of development-oriented photography I do. The more I read & learn about his technique, and more importantly why he used that technique, the more I realize that he might have been onto something. LOL! I’m reading his book “Examples, The Making of 40 Photographs” again right now for the 3rd time this year. You can like or dislike his work, but it was exactly what he wanted it to be… the dynamic tension of “creative control”. If any new digital photographer thinks there is nothing to learn from somebody who is known mostly for his large format B&W film work and passed away before digital really started to kick into gear, well, such a person would be completely wrong in my opinion.

“Galen Rowell is another figure who continues to influence me past his untimely death, and not just because of his photography itself. He was an incredible outdoorsman, knew & loved the land… and he also had a strong social component to his work. While Rowell strove to create beautiful imagery, the photographs weren’t an end in themselves. (Your blog had a recent interview with Phil Borges, who said “stunning images are always more powerful when put into service.” I believe that’s true.) In terms just of Rowell’s photographic style, I often think about his quote from the recent book, “Galen Rowell, A Retrospective” — “One of the biggest mistakes [you] can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time [the] film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it. … If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only to make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.”

“I have also really enjoyed meeting Darwin Wiggett on the two workshops of his that I attended in 2007. Darwin’s workshop style is field intensive… if there is any light anywhere, you get out there and make something happen. He and co-leader Alan Ernst know the area like the back of their hands and combine that with a great ability to read the light. It’s no good seeing the light or knowing that it’s coming, and yet not know where to go or how to capture it in a compelling way. So those are two hard-won lessons — learn the light, and learn the lay of the land. You can’t do that be being casual about it. I’ve always liked Darwin’s photographs, but being able to actually see him work and talk to him about what he does and why he does it, what goal he is going after — whether artistic or commercial — has been great.”

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Lockhart:

Have you done any formal training in photography, or are you self-taught?

Howland:

“I have no formal training in photography, nor did I come up through film. This whole thing has been new to me starting with digital work in 2004, a lot of it has been just stumbling along. But I read a lot and try to look at photography online or in print or book form and understand what about it inspires me. Associating with other enthusiastic photographers lately has also been a source of informal but pragmatic education in the craft.”

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Lockhart:

What is your favorite/most used post-processing technique (unless this is a trade secret).

Howland:

“It’s not a trade secret, but I can’t easily describe it as a single “technique” either. Basically it all revolves around capturing and then developing the light. That’s the short description, but not too helpful or specific!

“Whether using HDR or not, I want to get all of the useful light on the scene into a single place… a single image. I’m not worried about how it visually looks right then and there, that would be like worrying about how a film negative looks. The “digital negative” is the thing that has all of the light — the contrast, color, detail, everything — that I care about. That’s the starting point, and it’s important. If you don’t start at the right place, everything after that is behind the 8-ball. With a single exposure I often “expose to the right”, otherwise I’m using multiple exposures for HDR capture to make sure I get the light I need.

“Afterwards, developing the image is where I spend most of my time. It could just be a few minutes for some images, or a few days for others (usually big panoramas, where I’m constantly waiting for the computer to do something). It’s a series of interlocking things… HDR tone mapping, and then lots of Photoshop work although nothing outrageously complicated. Curves, levels, image layer blends… often multiple adjustments done selectively (or masked) to develop specific regions of the image. I can’t pick out any one thing as the favorite since it’s intertwined, all of it ties together.”

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Lockhart:

On your photographic journey, did you go through different phases? different styles?

Howland:

“You bet, and I expect to go through more. My first phase of “real” intentional photography was birds. While I enjoyed it and still do some of it, I didn’t really lock onto it. Plus having some commercial aspirations I realized early on that making any amount of income photographing birds as a specialty would be unlikely unless I pushed hard to be at the top of the game. I wasn’t sure I could or wanted to try for that. As I described above though, being outdoors a lot led to my next phase which I think of as “Landscape 101″. Trying a lot of stuff, not really succeeding at it very much, but feeling a pull to really lock onto it.

“So where I am now is a few phases along but still very much at the beginning. My focus is landscape-oriented work and the digital work to support it.

“Style-wise while the above things were going on I went (loosely speaking) from “straight photography” with basically no adjustments out of the digital camera, to a much more processing-oriented approach that looked that way. I’m now doing more digital darkroom work than before, but ironically because I’m trying to get away from having the technique be so obvious & visible to the viewer. I’m trying to develop the tonality perhaps as a darkroom master or a painter would, but still trying to keep to a natural look.

“I think I’m mostly past the big impacts from tools & techniques. I think many artists are their own worst critics and not satisfied with where they’re at. Certainly I’m like that, and I want to keep the journey moving towards more creative expression. In that area I’m only scratching the surface.”

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Lockhart:

Did you ever have any advice from colleagues, reviews, etc. and how helpful was it to you?

Howland:

“Not so strangely to those who know me, I don’t often go and seek input or advice when I’m setting up towards something initially. I either stumble into it and organically take it on, or I just quietly go along making my plans and then go for it. Getting into photography has had elements of both. I previously had few family, friends or acquaintances that were really into photography. (Two friends who were photographers contributed heavy review cycles on early drafts of the big HDR tutorial, for which they have my endless thanks. )

“Using the discussion and image critique forums at NatureScapes.Net has been of on-going value. I know some people think critique forums are creatively bankrupt or something. But if approached by the image poster and commenters as an open dialog, I think valuable things can be learned all around. What did I do? Why did I do it? What was I trying to achieve? Did viewers get it? Does something I did interfere with them getting it? Would they get it better if I did things some other way?

“And I don’t just mean in technical terms. Art is about connecting. People want the artist to interpret something for them, but then they also want to respond to it on various levels of their own. I think the more we understand as photographers about why we are or are not connecting with viewers, the more we can develop our ability to connect. It’s not all just about what I thought, it’s also about how people respond.

“So in that way the NSN critique forums have provided a bunch of advice from lots of people over time, including meeting up with people outside of the Internet and hashing over what we do and why. This has been valuable. Out of the NSN experience I’ve met some great folks and could now ask for a lot of advice if I didn’t already know what I know now. LOL! But of course there is always what I don’t yet know… hmm… ”

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Lockhart:

When you find your subject to shoot, are you usually looking for something to enhance it? i.e. nice foreground in a landscape?

Howland:

“Almost nobody has a completely exclusive style of course. But we do have our tendencies. I’m generally less looking for powerful graphic qualities for example, in many of my landscapes. I’m more trying to establish a sense of place and put the
viewer in the scene at a balance point. In other words to react to the idea of being there, seeing the light and the scene and taking it in; not so much reacting to the power of the imagery itself. (Am I looking at a place or a photograph of a place?)

“I will use dramatic elements, and do often bring in foregrounds since I prefer to shoot very wide angle or with vertical framing much of the time, to establish that viewer vantage point. But I’m looking at it more as it contributes to the sense of place than for what it contributes in purely visual or design terms. I do panoramas for the same reason. Using the light, the foreground, the sweep of the land, it’s nice when it comes together and folks say “Yeah I was there and that’s exactly what it felt like”, or perhaps “I sure would like to be there, it’s what I imagine”.”

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Lockhart:

Tell us about your equipment and what pushed you to that decision.

Howland:

“Equipment is pretty standard for the most part. I shoot a basic Canon EOS 5D digital SLR, with a remote release much of the time. I have a Really Right Stuff L-bracket on the camera so I can flip it horizontal or vertical at will. My tripod is a Velbon CF-640, and I use the Acratech leveling base and Really Right Stuff BH-55 head along with their MPR-CL II rail. A bunch of this stuff — the leveling base, head and rail — are in place to support the rotating panoramic shooting I do.

“After flirting with Nikon, I decided to go Canon back when I made my first significant investments in camera gear in 2004. I was mainly buying into a system that I felt offered the most for what I foresaw doing at the time, which was more bird & wildlife related. I liked the Canon camera line with 1.6X, 1.3X and 1.0X crop factor sensors, I liked the strong lineup of lenses including third parties, and I liked the R&D that Canon pushed in the area of low-noise CMOS image sensors. I felt this offered a lot of immediate value and long-term longevity, and so far I haven’t regretted the decision despite switching my emphasis to landscapes. Though some of Canon’s notable recent product introduction problems (to put it mildly) give me concern that Canon has lost track of quality control and customer service. I hope they’ll improve but at the end of the day, cameras are just tools and I try not to get too worked up about it.

“One thing I’ve been getting into the past year is some alternative lens work. (I mean besides doing something like buying Sigma lenses in the Canon EF mount, though I do like my Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6.) Alternative lens shooting is adapting lenses from other camera systems. Currently I enjoy using the Olympus 21mm f/2 and 35mm f/2.8 perspective control lenses for my landscape work. Something I didn’t foresee back when I went with Canon, was the flexibility of the EF lens mount and mirror box design in adapting a wide range of optics. I addition to those 3 mentioned lenses, my other landscape workhorses are Canon 24-105mm f/4 and 70-200mm f/4.

“Currently I’m experimenting with a Pentax 645 format lens, the FA 35mm f/3.5, using the Panoramic Shift Adapter from Zoerk. Hopefully that will do some interesting things.”

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Lockhart:

How do you see your photographic future, what do you dream about?

Howland:

“In terms of the technique side, I dream about being able to work with panoramic and high contrast scenes with a lot less effort. I’d love nothing more than an affordable 6×17 format 100+ megapixel digital camera that could shoot native HDR images. I think that dream will take awhile to materialize, especially at a price I can afford. It’s almost enough to make me take up 617 or 624 film photography!

“I also aspire to lock into one or more projects that I can really use to focus the artistic side of my pursuit. And to be sure, a lot more emphasis on “why” photograph something, than just on “what” or “how”.

“This relates to the idea of photography in service. The land is here for us and we are here for the land. Bad stuff doesn’t happen to the land just because of some abstract, impersonal or random force out there. Sure, natural things happen. But humanity is also happening to the land, in a big way. Yet at the same time we have the potential to do good for it… to conserve it, help it heal itself, treasure it… to live with it rather than just live on it or from it. But we’re not going to be able to do that as long as we’re locked into unsustainable and destructive attitudes and patterns of behavior. So in a way I see strong ties between addressing social, economic and humanitarian issues, and conserving the land and the other living things upon it. I think if people suffer, the land will suffer. If the land suffers, people will suffer.

“Photography in service that can bring improvement to either people or the land can bring improvement to the other as well. I don’t have a concrete sense of what to do with this right now, but I feel something will come and hope to work towards it.”

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Lockhart:

Do you have any specific photographic experiences that were of a wow factor and will remain with you forever?

Howland:

“My first Snow Goose blast-off at Bosque del Apache was incredible. Photographing a family of Burrowing Owls in southern Alberta a couple of summers ago was also a great experience. They’re at risk up here, and I’d long wanted to be able to photograph them. Being able to return to the burrow a few times over several weeks and watch the progress was a wonderful experience.

“Being in the outdoors and having a kind of tranquility soak into me even as I’m working to capture the scene is something I wouldn’t trade away. I can remember several moments like this… a sunrise over the blue frozen expanse of Abraham Lake last winter for example, shown in the opening panoramic scene.”

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Lockhart:

How important is photography to you besides any financial gains?

Howland:

“Well, I’m not very commercial about the photography right now. Though I hope to pursue it more commercially, I can’t see it ever being mostly about the money. The importance comes from actually doing it rather than being paid for it. In one sense for me photography is more about understanding the world, my place in it, and getting to a more balanced state.”

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Lockhart:

If you would change what is now your favorite subject in photography, what other subject would you really like to follow?

Howland:

“I wouldn’t really change it, I think I’m doing what I need to be doing. I need to get less haphazard about it. ”

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Lockhart:

What really inspires you now?

Howland:

“In terms of subjects, winter and grasslands are both something I want to work with a lot in the near future. Both obviously are defining characteristics of where I live, and both have some challenge to them, especially in order to do something beyond just the “picture postcard” moment.

“And as I have alluded to, the concept of photography in service is something that inspires me. People who do that inspire me.”

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Lockhart:

Which one of your own images is very special to you and why? Could we also have that picture to display? Is it an HDR image or a traditional exposure?

Howland:

“Here is one that evokes good things for me. It is from a trip my wife & I made to Crete earlier this year (along with some other very good friends of ours). It was our first real vacation after a couple of years of going through some stuff that we would really rather not have gone through. This trip was something good, and we really needed that.

“We like Crete a lot, though this was the first trip there since I took up photography seriously. Anyway, this little chapel, sitting on a breakwater that extends out into the harbor at Georgioupolis, is a place I enjoy. Churches and chapels dot the landscape in Crete, and of course it’s a small island so the land, sea and sky come together many places. I visited this spot I think 3 times before I got some interesting light on this morning. (I did use HDR to develop it.) Anyway, this is my favorite shot from that trip, so far. It kind of symbolizes endurance and hope for me.”

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Lockhart:

May we have a link for our members to view your work on the Internet?

Howland:

“My personal website is currently a useless thing, under redevelopment. For now I’m starting to put things online in various places. The best place to look is probably my Flickr gallery:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividaspect

“And of course I’m active at NatureScapes.Net so I post a lot of images there and talk with folks about whatever is interesting to us.”

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Lockhart:

And finally, what message would you send to the visitors of our blog and in general any new or fairly new photographers?

Howland:

“I guess for those who would want to be photographers, rather than simply people who take photographs, the most important thing I can think of right now is to encourage you to decide what you really want to show or say to viewers through your images.

“What are you passionate about? What do you value? What would get you out of bed at 4:00 in the morning on a cold day to go out there and shoot? What would make you travel 2,000 miles? Treasure the people in your life as much as you can, but what would you want to photograph “just a little longer” at the risk of making those people impatient with you? Find something like this, get into it, look at it and look at it again. Bend your technique and your creative expression into communicating those subjects as best you can. If you can do that it will draw viewers and resonate with them.”

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Thanks to Royce for his time in answering questions about his work with HDR. This new technique is producing some amazing images. Please take the time to read his excellent article about HDR at Nature Scapes Net. It is one of the most extensive and detailed articles available today about High Dynamic Range Photography.