Landscape Photography Filters
Landscape filters are used to optimise shots in camera so that you get a balanced image with good contrast and colours. Nothing beats being in the right place at the right time and filters are used mainly to boost poor light or control the colour. If you have great light you don't need filters but if you are after a certain look then there are artistic photography filters available. Most of the images in the Irish Landscape Photography album are unfiltered - the colours were added later. You may also be interested in my other article on photographic filters
If a landscape is perfectly lit and the contrast between the land and the sky is not too great then you can get a brilliant shot first time by taking a spot meter reading from a neutral area such as green grass or a blue sky. to give a warmer or cooler result. The white balance setting in digital cameras replaces the physical warming and cooling filters that are used in colour film photography.
Landscape filters that are most useful on digital SLR cameras are:
Grey Graduated Filter (for use in high contrast scenes with bright skies).
Polarising Filter (for boosting colour saturation and cutting reflections).
Ultraviolet Filter (for reducing atmospheric haze and blue colour casts).
Gray Graduated Filter
This filter is grey at the top and gradually becomes clear towards the bottom. It is used to control the exposure when you are faced with high contrast situations such as that seen when there is a very bright sky above a normally lit landscape. A digital camera has a limited dynamic range of around 7 stops of light and in high contrast situations it is easy to get images with burned out highlights unless you take control and tweak your exposures.
Polarising Filter
The polarising filter was created years ago to get better colour rendition on Kodak films but it still has important uses for the digital photographer of today. It is very good for increasing contrast between white clouds and blue sky
A polariser can produce better colour saturation and improve the contrast in the image. When you have fitted the polarising filter to the lens you rotate the filter and watch the strength of the colours change until you have the effect you want. The effect can be too severe when dealing with blue skies so the filter should be used in a controlled manner unless you want very deep blues.
Ultraviolet (UV) Filter
Whenever there is a blue haze in the atmosphere you can reduce the blue colour cast by using a UV filter. Distant blue colour casts appear on the landscape during the daytime in summer and blue is also seen in open shadow areas during winter or whenever it is cold. This will show up on your image later and if you want to try it for your self just take a picture on a cold day and slightly boost the image saturation in photoshop. You will see that blues starts to appear very quickly in the shadows as you turn up the saturation.
Other Filters
It all depends the look you want in the final image and you can be as creative as you want. There are graduated filters available from Cokin that come in all colour combinations that allow you to create images that are more suited to being called digital art.
Landscapes are well suited to artistic renderings and there are photographers who have developed their own style through the use of the filters and effects that available in image editing applications like Photoshop. The possibilities are endless and photographic filters are just one more creative tool we have to help us produce any type of image we like.
A landscape photographer does not have any control over the light but we all have an unlimited imagination and a whole array of filters that can be used to develop images with a style that expresses our personal interpretation of our world. I believe we should all be true to ourselves and experiment freely because it is the unfettered joy of experimentation that brings out our creative side and that makes photography so much fun.
A landscape photographer does not have any control over the light but we all have an unlimited imagination and a whole array of filters that can be used to develop images with a style that expresses our personal interpretation of our world. I believe we should all be true to ourselves and experiment freely because it is the unfettered joy of experimentation that brings out our creative side and that makes photography so much fun.
A landscape photographer does not have any control over the light but we all have an unlimited imagination and a whole array of filters that can be used to develop images with a style that expresses our personal interpretation of our world. I believe we should all be true to ourselves and experiment freely because it is the unfettered joy of experimentation that brings out our creative side and that makes photography so much fun.
