Upcoming City Escapes Events
Spring Arts and Crafts Show – Spokane
Custer’s 36th Annual Spring Arts & Crafts Show
March 8 – 9 - 10, 2013
Spokane Fair & Expo Center
404 N. Havana Road, Spokane
Spring Arts and Crafts Show – Pasco
Custer’s 14th Annual Spring Arts & Crafts Show
March 22 – 23 - 24, 2013
TRAC Center
6600N. Burden Blvd, Pasco
International Art Festival at Peace Arch Park - Blaine
June 22 – 23, 2013
Peace Arch Park, Blaine, WA
Two Must-Have Filters for Landscape Photographers
Many of us enjoy playing with our photographs after we take them, applying in-camera or in-computer filter effects to make our images sepia, black & white, have ragged borders, look like they came from the Old West, or any of hundreds of other effects. This tinkering can be a lot of fun, and one can end up with some impressive images. But for sheer usefulness, two filters in particular stand out, and they aren’t applied after the shot is taken, but before. Yep, they are actual physical filters, not computer alterations of the photograph – and they belong in every landscape photographer’s gear bag.
The first is a polarizing filter. Light rays generally enter the camera lens from many different directions and bounce around like crazy once inside, resulting in haziness, reflections, and washed-out colors. Polarizing filters block stray light rays, allowing in only parallel rays. The effect can be dramatic: colors are richer and more saturated, reflections vanish, the surface of water becomes see-through. Anyone interested in photographing lakes, waterfalls, tidal pools, or pretty much anything else with water will find this filter tremendously useful. Its ability to reveal things under the surface of water adds a tremendous depth to images, often adding just that needed element to turn an okay image into a spectacular one. Likewise, a photographer dealing with other reflective surfaces will find a polarizing filter good for reducing or eliminating bursts, reflections, and flare. Want that sky just a bit bluer, but don’t want your entire image to have a blue cast? This is the filter for you. (Know, alas, that even the beloved polarizing filter is not quite perfect: it will make rainbows vanish right out of your image.)
Polarizing filters come in linear and circular versions. To determine which you need, determine the age of your camera or – gasp! – read the manual. Linear polarizers only work well with older cameras. Because of changes in modern SLRs’ reflex mirrors, linear polarizers will often negatively affect the metering and autofocus abilities of the camera. Have no fear, however: a circular polarizer is but a linear polarizer with a second element attached to compensate for that change in the reflex mirror, so circular polarizers work beautifully with modern SLRs. As a bonus, they will also work perfectly well with older cameras, so if you have more than one camera and aren’t sure which version to buy, go for the circular. They are a bit more expensive, but their universality makes the extra cost worth it.
The second must-have filter for landscape photographers is a graduated neutral-density (GND) filter. (Who comes up with these names?) This is a filter that is dark on one half and clear on the other. It is used to even out the light in a scene which exceeds a camera’s dynamic range, or the range of light in which the camera can accurately record detail. The scene perhaps most commonly photographed using a GND filter is a landscape in which the sky is very bright. Without the GND filter, if the foreground is properly exposed, a bright sky often loses all cloud detail. The GND filter darkens the sky, allowing the camera to capture more of the elements in it, deepening the color and increasing the contrast, all without changing the exposure or values of the foreground.
The transition from dark to clear can either be abrupt (“hard-edged”) or more gentle (“soft-edged”). Hard-edged GND filters are used for scenes in which the transition from bright area to darker area is well-defined and on a single plane, such as a flat prairie and the sky. Soft-edged GND filters are used where the transition is less clear, such as a scene including a mountain and the sky. GND filters are available in a variety of densities, allowing photographers a great deal of freedom in determining just how much they want to tame down a bright area. They can also be stacked to create even more options.
Graduated neutral-density filters are some of the best things around for nailing the exposure of some of Mother Nature’s favorite challenging lighting situations. Your camera cannot process the same range of light that your eyes can. A GND filter or two will go a long way toward helping it out.
March Specials
We want to see you! Spend $200 or more at one of our spring shows (see sidebar) and get a five-pack of our beautiful Christmas cards!
Fun Facts
Ah, March – a time to celebrate all things Irish!
- Up for some tongue twisters? The prize for longest township name is split three ways: Muckanaghederdauhaulia, Glassillaunvealnacurra, & Illaungraffanavrankagh. Each has 22 letters.
- The Guinness brewery, begun in 1759, originally had a 9,000 year lease – at £45 per year. (Since then Guinness has bought the property outright.)
- In 1800, the population of Ireland was almost twice that of the United States.
- A few famous Irishmen:
· The playwright Oscar Wilde. His full name: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.
· Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer.
· Hollywood movie director John Ford. (Born Sean O’Feeney in 1894.)
· James Hoban, designer of the original White House in Washington, D.C.
· Dracula. Okay, maybe not. But Dracula’s creator, Bram Stoker, certainly was.
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www.cityescapesphotography.com
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