SPECIAL TECHNIQUES
POLARIZING FILTERS
Among the many filters on the market today, a polarizing filter is the one that every photographer should have. Its primary purpose is to reduce glare from reflective surfaces such as glass, metal, and water. On sunny days, a polarizer is most effective when you’re shooting at a 90-degree angle to the sun. For this reason, sidelighting (when the sun is hitting your left or right shoulder) is a popular lighting situation when you are using a polarizing filter. Maximum polarization can be achieved only when you’re at a 90-degree angle to the sun; if the sun is at your back or right in front of you, the polarizer will do you no good at all.
Working in bright sunlight at midday isn’t a favorite activity for many experienced shooters since the light is so harsh, but if you need to make images at this time of day, a polarizer will help somewhat. This is because the sun is directly overhead—at a 90-degree angle to you whether you’re facing north, south, east, or west.
If you’re working in morning or late-afternoon light, you’ll want to use a polarizing filter every time you shoot facing to the north or south. In this situation, you’re at a 90-degree angle to the sun, and as you rotate the polarizing filter on your lens, you’ll clearly see the transformation: blue sky and puffy white clouds will “pop” with much deeper color and contrast.
Why is this? Light waves move around in all sorts of directions—up, down, sideways, and all angles in between. The greatest glare comes from vertical light waves, and the glare is most intense when the sun is at a 90-degree angle to you. A polarizing filter is designed to remove this vertical glare and block out vertical light, allowing only the more pleasing and saturated colors created by horizontal light to be recorded.
Note that if you shift your location so that you’re at a 30- or 45-degree angle to the sun, the polarizing effect of the filter will be seen on only one-half or one-third of the composition, and so one-half or one-third of the blue sky will be much more saturated in color than the rest of it. Perhaps you’ve already seen this effect in some of your landscapes. Now you know why.
Although there’s vertical light around when you’re working with frontlit or backlit subjects, there’s no need to use the polarizing filter at those times, since the sun is no longer at a 90-degree angle to you.
Is the use of polarizing filters limited to sunny days? Definitely not! In fact, on cloudy or rainy days there’s just as much vertical light and glare as on sunny days. All this vertical light casts dull reflective glare on wet streets, wet metal and glass surfaces (such as cars and windows), wet foliage, and the surfaces of bodies of water (such as streams and rivers). The polarizing filter gets rid of all this dull gray glare.
You will see two different exposure settings below because a polarizing filter cuts the light down by 2 stops. That accounts for the 2-stop difference in shutter speeds between these two photos.
Both photos: Nikon D800E, Nikkor 24–85mm at 24mm, ISO 100, (left) f/22 for 1/4 sec. without polarizer, (right) f/22 for 1 sec.
I don’t know how often you have a chance to shoot a rainbow, but if you want to add some real intensity to your next rainbow image, put on a polarizer. As you turn the outer ring of the filter, you will clearly see the intensity of the rainbow colors increase dramatically. Obviously, you want the most intense colors, so once you see that, stop turning and start shooting.
Most rainbows are shot with a wide-angle lens since a rainbow covers a wide area across the landscape or cityscape. Also, more often than not, rainbow compositions do not offer the opportunity to use immediate foreground interest, and so you usually will end up calling upon the “who cares?” apertures from f/8 to f/11. Finally, a rainbow that fills the sky like this is 100 percent dependent on rain and frontlight. After a rain shower, if you now find yourself being blinded by the sun as it pops through the clouds, turn around! Chances are really good that you will see a rainbow.
Nikon D3X, Nikkor 35–70mm at 35mm, f/11 for 1/160 sec., ISO 100
GRADUATED NEUTRAL-DENSITY FILTERS
Neutral-Density filters reduce light transmission throughout the scene. Unlike a neutral-density filter, a graduated neutral-density filter contains an area of density that merges with an area of no density. In effect, it is like a pair of sunglasses with lenses that are tinted only one-third, leaving the other two-thirds clear. Rather than reducing the light transmission throughout the scene, as an ND filter does, a graduated ND filter reduces light only in certain areas of the scene.
Suppose you find yourself in the country just after sunset and want to use your wide-angle lens to get a composition that includes not only the sunset but several small farmhouses and a large barn nearby and of course the surrounding wheat fields. Assuming this is a “who cares?” composition, you’d choose the right aperture first, in this case f/11. Then you’d point your camera at the sky to find the shutter speed that is required to make the sky a correct exposure; let’s assume it reads 1/30 sec. Now point the camera down so that no sky is included and take a meter reading of the landscape below: the farmhouse, barn, and wheat field; let’s say 1/4 sec. is indicated as a correct exposure. That’s a 3-stop difference in exposure. If you went with f/11 for 1/30 sec., you’d record a wonderful color-filled sky, but the farmhouse, barn, and wheat fields would record as a dark, underexposed mass. If you set your exposure for the landscape below, the sky would be way overexposed and all its wonderful color would disappear.
The quickest way, and the way that requires the least amount of work, is to use a 3-stop LEE graduated neutral-density filter. The design of this filter, along with the filter holder, allows you to slide the filter up or down or even turn the outer ring of the filter holder so that you can place the filter at an angle. This in turn allows for perfect placement of the filter in most of your scenes.
In the situation described above, I would not hesitate to use my 3-stop graduated ND filter positioned so that only the much brighter sky was covered by the graduated ND filter. I do not want the filter covering anything other than the bright sky. Once the filter is in place, aligned so that the ND section stops right at the horizon line, the correct exposure of the sky is reduced by 3 stops, and I would now shoot the entire scene at f/11 for 1/4 sec.
Although graduated ND filters come in 1- to 3-stop variations, I’ve never understood why one needs a 1 or 2 stop. But for sure, the 3 stop will get a lot of use. In addition, they come in hard-edge and soft-edge types, meaning that the clear section of the filter meets the ND section with either an abrupt change or a gradual transition. My personal preference is the soft edge.
The tricky part of this scene was the almost 4-stop difference between the rocks and water below and the buildings and sky above. With my camera and lens on a tripod, I chose an aperture of f/16 and set my exposure for the rocks and water below. As you can see on the left, this resulted in a correct exposure of the foreground rocks and water, but at the expense of the skyline and the blue/magenta dusky sky. Before shooting the next exposure on the right, I placed my 3-stop ND filter on the lens, and voilà, problem solved! My exposure time for both of these images was the same: f/16 for 4 seconds.
If you don’t have a Graduated ND filter (or you forgot to bring yours), you can always do this effect in Lightroom or Photoshop during the RAW processing phase by using the built-in Graduated ND filter. But first, make your exposure in the same manner as if you had the filter; exposing for the scene below the horizon line.
When you bring the file in for processing, you simply click on the Graduated ND filter feature, and after setting an exposure adjustment, you pull down the arrows until the over-exposed, brighter part of your scene, above the horizon line, is more in line with the overall correct exposure. In effect, it can render the over-exposed sky and cityscape as a correct exposure.
Both images: Nikon D800E, Nikkor 24–120mm at 24mm, f/16 for 4 sec., ISO 200
MULTIPLE EXPOSURES
If taking a single exposure of a scene or subject doesn’t quite do it for you, how about taking two exposures? Or why not seven or nine exposures of the same subject, stacking all the exposures one on the other and within seconds collapsing them all into a single image? You can do all this in camera with most Nikon cameras, a few of the Pentax models, and of late a few of the Canon models. Get out your manual if you have trouble finding this feature, because once you do, you can explore the many creative possibilities it affords.
I like to inject a bit of implied movement into my multiple exposures. To do this you simply point your camera at the subject, choose the appropriate aperture (f/16 or f/22 for storytelling, f/4 or f/5.6 for isolation, or f/8 or f/11 for “who cares?”), and, if you are in Aperture Priority mode, fire away three, five, seven, or nine times, all the while moving the camera ever so slightly with each exposure. If you choose to shoot in manual exposure mode, adjust the shutter speed until a correct exposure is indicated (as if you were shooting a single exposure) and then fire away, again moving the camera slightly with each of your three, five, seven, or nine exposures. The camera’s “auto-gain” feature will take all your combined exposures and blend them into a single, correct exposure.
Almost any subject can benefit from the multiple exposure technique—even city scenes. Overcast days, sunny days, frontlit scenes, and even some backlit scenes lend themselves to multiple exposures as well, but most of all, look for scenes that are colorful and filled with pattern.
With my camera and 200mm lens mounted on tripod, I chose to focus on this lone tree; in the background, another tree was full of magenta-colored blooms. With my “who cares?” aperture set to f/11 for maximum depth of field, I simply adjusted the shutter speed until 1/160 sec. indicated a correct exposure and pressed the shutter release, which resulted in the exposure you see here (left). It’s a nice shot, for sure, but I thought it also might be one of those subjects that look even better as a multiple exposure, because it was an image made up of colors and textures. Plus, on this particular day, with a cloudy sky above, it was a classic opportunity to shoot multiple exposures as far as I was concerned since contrast was low! Again, with that same exposure reading, I set the multiple exposure feature on my Nikon D800E to nine shots, and as they fired, I moved the camera ever so slightly up, down, and from side to side while pressing off all nine shots. Within seconds of the firing of all the shots, my Nikon D800E “processed” them as a single correct exposure (right).
All images: Nikon D800E, Nikkor 70–300mm at 200mm, f/11 for 1/160 sec., ISO 100
In anticipation of your question: yes, you can always shoot just two separate exposures, and oh my, do I ever have a good idea for those times when you want to try your hand at shooting just two! Shooting only two exposures opens up several welcome possibilities: you can combine out-of-focus subjects with in-focus subjects or shoot that full moon in the eastern sky and then shoot that nearby landscape or cityscape, and voilà, it now has a full moon in it!
First, go to your menu and find the multiple exposure feature. Choose 2, and just as I did here, you can now shoot the full moon up there in the eastern sky and compose the moon so that it is in the upper right-hand portion of the frame. Now turn around to the west and compose the Yaquina Head Light along the central Oregon coast, and within seconds the camera blends the two exposures together, as you can see here!
In shooting a full moon against the dark sky, your correct exposure is f/11 at 1/125 sec. with ISO 200 or f/11 at 1/60 sec. with ISO 100. You must shoot either of these exposures with the camera in manual mode or your camera’s light meter will think the scene with the moon and all that dark sky needs to be shot at a really long exposure, and of course that is not the case. You want only the bright full moon!
After you shoot the moon, you will set a completely different exposure for whatever scene you are going to shoot next; for me that was the lighthouse. With my aperture set to f/16, I pointed the camera up at the dusky blue sky to the right of the lighthouse and adjusted my shutter speed until 15 seconds indicated a correct exposure, and I then fired away. Again, as you can see, the moon and the lighthouse became one right then and there!
Are we having fun or what? If ever there were two techniques that allow me to stay true to my motto (Get as much as possible, if not all, done in camera), these would be it.
Moon: Nikon D300S, Nikkor 70–300mm at 135mm, f/11 for 1/125 sec., ISO 200. Lighthouse: Nikon D300S, Nikkor 70–300mm at 80mm, f/16 for 15 sec., ISO 200
Take your camera with you the next time you head down to the local garden center. In addition to buying some flowers, you will want to shoot some double exposures while you are there. With your multiple exposure number set to 2, take an out-of-focus picture of a large group of flowers and then take an in-focus picture of a single flower, and voilà, let the romance begin!
The first image I shot (top, left) was with my Nikkor 70–300mm, and I deliberately shot at a wide open aperture, f/5.6, and with the flowers out of focus (another example of times when you must have autofocus turned off). After making this out-of-focus exposure, I found a single bloom (top, right) and used an aperture of f/22 to get a lot of depth of field from the tip of the stamen to the throat of the flower.
After these two images were shot, the camera automatically blended them together (bottom).
All images: Nikon D800E, Nikkor 70–300mm, ISO 100, (top, left) f/5.6 for 1/1000 sec., (top, right) f/22 for 1/60 sec.
There really is no limit to subject matter when it comes to shooting double exposures or multiple exposures. If I had a higher page count for this book, I am sure I could fill up twelve to sixteen pages with ideas, but within the limited page count I must include the suggestion to shoot another double exposure idea that also has unlimited potential: combining a portrait with a pattern or texture. I am sure that with just a few minutes of thought you will be out the door to try your hand at the multitude of textures you can double-expose with any number of portraits, for example, a portrait of your child with the SpongeBob pattern found on his or her pajamas; a portrait of your husband, “the Skipper,” with a patternly shot of the many boats in the marina; a portrait of a young boy with a portrait of his grandpa, and so on. Just let your imagination run free!
Something as simple as combining the moss-covered bark of an oak tree with a young woman’s portrait creates a haunting ghostlike image. There is no limit to the textures one can use when creating double exposure portraits.
All images: Nikon D800E, Nikkor 24–120mm at 100mm, f/11 for 1/160 sec., ISO 100