Jørgen Herland
2005-2008
The start
I began shooting HDRIs back in late 2005 when HDR IBL (High Dynamic Range Image Based Lighting) had just started becoming a mainstream technique for 3D lighting. My first years of shooting HDRis was done using cheap and outdated camera gear. I could sort-of capture of the real-world luminance values to realistically light my 3D scenes, using a cheap christmas ornament and my digital camera in manual mode. All I needed then was HDR Shop to unwrap my spherical shots into panoramic images and use them as light sources. One of the reasons I was so into this was Nick Bertke’s work on rendering Half-Life 2 game assets using his own HDRIs. I quickly jumped on this train and along with him and this community was able to learn what worked and didn’t work when shooting my own HDRIs.
2009-2016
getting serious
After acquiring my first DSLR and fisheye lens, I took my game up to the next level. I got to know other HDRI photographers, already accomplished in their field. I spent years learning from guys like Wouter Wynen (Aversis) and Chris Bloch (The HDRI Handbook), while also developing my own style and techniques. I’m a huge fan of optimizing one's workflow and I constantly went back to rethink how HDRIs should be made, with the software available to me at the time.
Already in 2008-2009 I had teamed up with Aversis and started selling some of my own HDRIs through their online store. This was more of an experiment to see if my material could hold up in a professional market. For a few years, I shot new stuff here and there, but things didn’t really kick off until I in 2013 met an Australian CGI artist, Grant Warwick, who discovered the potential in my HDR work. We decided to work together on his project Mastering CGI, wherein I would be able to sell my HDRIs to a wide audience.
I spent a few years putting together HDRIs which Grant masterfully incorporated into his online CGI lessons and at the beginning of 2016 we proudly released a large pack of plug-n-play HDRIs, with a lot of varied locations and colors. These proved very popular amongst professionals and students alike, from Archviz to product look-dev and Automotive rendering.
The success of MCGI gave me room to explore where my HDRIs could go. I was never interested in mass-production or in any way attempt to milk the situation, instead I wanted to figure out how to take my HDRIs to the next level.
2017 - now
DOING MY OWN THING
In 2017 I created the Facebook page JorgenHDRi, mainly as an outlet for me to share my work developing HDR techniques and interact with the community. I explored backplates more, since this had been requested by the community for years. I kept creating new HDRIs and showcasing them through my page, but I felt something missing. My HDRIs just weren’t reaching the next level. After a year, I’d finally saved up enough money to upgrade my out-dated camera gear, and equipped with higher quality glass and more pixels, I began shooting HDRIs with drastically higher quality than before. Next, I needed to tackle backplates. Long thought to be overkill, I decided to actually shoot HDR backplates instead of the usual JPEG/TIFF variant you’ll find in most HDRI packs online. Even though it takes a lot more time, only HDR backplates hold up with HDRIs on this level. Things were falling into place. Then came 2019 and I got involved with a group of artists exploring advanced color management in CGI, namely ACES (Academy Color Encoding System). I’d dipped my toes in this a few years prior, even gotten some fairly good results in my renders, but the lack of information online and absolutely no confidence in what I was doing, I decided to wait. This group of ACES enthusiasts re-sparked my interest and this time there were a lot more resources available. I spent the better part of 2019 working ACES into my everyday CGI work and now I can’t imagine my life without it.
Tired of the Facebook system and how it purposely prevented my followers from seing my updates, I decided in 2020 to create this website.
Animation rendered using an ACES workflow, which makes combining CGI and log footage a lot easier.