One of my favorite and frequently-used post-shoot techniques is darkening the sky, adding drama to an outdoor image. A natural dramatic sky—vivid sunsets, ominous cumulonimbus or wispy cirrus clouds—are a lusted-for backdrop, but oh so fleeting. Much more common are plain gray skies—or a blue sky devoid of interesting clouds. In a typical photo, the […]
Tip: Polarize that sky (without a polarizer) __ 06/2008
Edited 3/3/2013. In the March, ’08 tip I discussed “the only filter”—the polarizer—a filter that hasn’t gone away with digital, and whose hallmark is a deep, blue sky. Of course, if this was the only thing a polarizer was good for, it would go the dustbin route of other filters. But a dramatic blue sky […]
Photo Tip: The Only Filter (Polarizer) ___ 03/2008
In days of pre-digital yore, outdoor photographers carried a bunch of filters. The essentials were warming, split-neutral density (ND) and polarizing. But with different filter thread sizes for various lenses, additional filters or adaptor rings were often required. Then to top it off, serious shooters carried as many as four split ND filters—or certainly at […]