THE THINGS I DO…

Sometimes, shooting from a different angle will open your eyes to a new composition you had never thought of before. During a recent vacation to the Asheville, NC area, I was chasing some spectacular cloud formations across the sky, trying to find an interesting foreground to use to frame my shot. While clouds can sometimes make great photos by themselves, I was looking for something to remember my vacation by and was in search of something interesting to put in the foreground. We found this little historical park at the site of the old Zeb Vance homestead and seeing this combination of old log homes and rustic fences caused me to swerve into their parking lot.

I was using my circular polarizer to give me a spectacular blue backdrop for the clouds (and to add more saturation to the greens), but I still wasn’t happy with the shot…that is, until I bent down to get a different lens from my bag. Looking up from that low angle, I saw this mirrored composition of the spit-rail fencing against the mountains in the distance and immediately had an “aha!” moment. I swapped lenses (I used a 24-70mm zoom for this) and got down to ground level. I mean all the way down! Lying on my side, I fired off 10 or 15 shots. In a few minutes, the clouds moved on and so did I…happy that I took the “low road” to get this photograph.

A gorgeous cloud-filled sky gave me a reason to get outdoors and play around with over-saturating landscapes.

To get this particular effect, I used my circular polarizer to make the sky as blue as possible and then underexposed a stop-and-a-half to make sure I would have enough detail in the clouds. I shot this as a raw file, to make sure I would have a lot of flexibility in toning the clouds and to make the next part of the process easier. I opened this image in Lightroom 2 (have I ever told you how fantastic this program is?) and, after doing basic toning to bring out the maximum detail in the clouds, I bumped up the saturation of the blues and greens…a lot.

Once I had adjusted the color to match reality, I took the settings an additional 20 points to the right on the Lightroom saturation slider for these two colors to over-saturate things even more. The resulting over-saturated image is much more eye-catching than had I not used a polarizer and a little software “help” after the fact.

Go try it for yourself the next time you have a cloud-filled, beautiful sky. Don’t worry if you don’t have Lightroom 2, you can accomplish the same color tweaks using the Adobe Raw plug-in and Photoshop. Make your adjustments within Adobe Raw using the controls under the “HSL/grayscale” tab. Have fun learning this new technique!

Q from Jamie: Which is a better purchase for my wide-angle zoom lens, a UV or a Skylight filter?
A: First, let’s look at the real reason you’re buying a filter. Is it for UV reduction or lens protection? If it’s for UV reduction and you’re using a digital camera, don’t bother. Today’s digital sensors aren’t nearly as sensitive to UV rays as film cameras were, so no reduction is necessary.

That leaves lens protection as the only real reason for using a clear filter. So, if you’re shooting in an area with a lot of stuff flying through the air (and I’ve blogged here before saying that’s the only reason for using any filter other than a polarizer, ND or ND-grad in front of your lens), spend the extra bucks to get the best UV filter you can afford. I recommend B+W or Hoya brands. Also, since you’re buying this filter for a wide-angle lens, be sure to look for the ones that are designed to be thinner to avoid the vignetting that happens when the filter is too thick and shows in the corners of your photos. Thanks Jamie, great question!

The one filter that you absolutely, positively need in your bag is the circular polarizer. A polarizer is a filter that polarizes the light going through it to noticeably darken blue skies, reduce reflections and increase color saturation in your photos. The “circular” in its name means your auto focus and auto exposure systems won’t be affected by the polarized light and will focus and meter normally. Regular, non-circular polarizers are a little cheaper but won’t offer this extremely useful feature.

Polarizers are two pieces of polarized, coated glass that rotate relative to each other to increase or decrease the polarizing effect. Depending upon how much you rotate the filter, the effect can be subtle or quite dramatic.

Non-polarized, left, polarizer at max, right. Note saturated trees, sky at right.

The standard filter minuses apply here. Circular polarizers are expensive and will put two, not one additional layer of glass between you and your subject. (If you remember my earlier post about filters, you’ll remember that anytime you put glass in front of your camera, it causes some degree of image degradation.) Oh, and they’ll cost you at least one f-stop in exposure…depending on how much polarizing you do (i.e. if your base exposure is f/8, you’ll need to shoot at f/5.6 or thereabouts with a polarizer). Add to the pluses the added saturation, reflection control and the ability to double as a neutral density filter.

I think the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to polarizing filters.

Using a polarizer is simple, just rotate the filter as you look through the viewfinder. When you see the amount of sky darkening/saturation/reflection elimination you like, make the picture. Understand that if you change your camera’s orientation to the subject (i.e. change from a horizontal to vertical shot), you’ll need to re-adjust your polarizer.

I picked up a trick long ago that helps me quickly see where the maximum amount of polarization will take place. You simply make an “L” with your thumb and index finger, point your index finger at the sun and pretend your thumb is tracing an imaginary line across the sky. With that line in mind, the area of sky on the shadow side of your thumb will get the most benefit from the polarizer. A subject in front of that line will not see any benefit from a polarizer.

Hopefully, this photo shows the area of maximum effect.

So, if you’re still unconvinced about the value of a polarizing filter, borrow one from another photographer (that’s another benefit of attending photo walks…well-equipped photogs!) and give it a few turns (literally). I think you’ll see why I made room in my camera bag for this “must-have” filter.

Buy one.