Black and white beach photography can be a really cathartic experience. Standing on the rocks hearing the crash of waves, feeling slight spray whilst watching the sun come down, can help the day’s worries just evaporate! After this blissful experience, you get home hoping for some gorgeous black and white masterpieces that you envisaged, but sometimes you end up with grey, lifeless images.

Let us show you 5 techniques that we use to get around this problem, when doing black and white beach photography. These will ensure that every time you go down to the sea, you will come back with unique photographs to be proud of.

During our recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa, Ally and I took a day trip to a tiny beach called Slangkop. (This means Snake Head in Afrikaans.) If you’re looking to go there, it is right next to a small village called Kommetjie. There is a beautiful old lighthouse there that dates back to 1919. This 33m high round cast iron tower looks so interesting from a distance that we hoped to get some amazing images of the area. We arrived mid afternoon and stayed until just after sunset. As you will see from the images in this article, the lighthouse was probably the least interesting thing to photograph, mainly because it closes at 3pm and is surrounded by a huge ugly electrified and barbed wire fence.

Why use black and white photography

One of the joys of photographing along the shoreline are the subtle colours one gets from the turquoise of the sea to the orange of the setting sun reflected off of rocks to the pale tan sand. It’s a watercolour painter’s dream, so why would we want to give up these amazing subtleties for a black and white image? There are a number of reasons, but the main ones we find are it forces you to look at the shapes of your scene and we end up with much better compositions.

Black and white can give you incredible dramatic images that any colour can dilute.

Everybody has taken photographs of the beach. Sofor your images to stand out you need to present them with something that’s not been seen hundreds of times before. Black and white photography will do this.

The 5 top techniques we use

1: Photography in the Golden Hour

The golden hour is the hour before sunset and after sunrise. It gives colour photographs a beautiful soft warm colour cast that is really desirable but what does it do for black and white photography? Well, we love shooting in the golden hour because the lighting gives objects a wonderful 3D feel with long and dark shadows. All the textures on rocks just come to life and even sand takes on a new textured look.

2: Silhouettes and contre-jour lighting

Of course the golden hour is perfect for photographing contre-jour. For a more in-depth look at contre-jour look at our article here.  By photographing into the sun you will find the scene take on new and interesting shapes as the light just touches the rim of objects, throwing the rest of the object into darkness. With large areas of darkness you can create mystery in your images as it leaves the viewer’s brain to fill in the details. Be careful with the extreme lighting as it’s really easy to totally blow out (lose all detail) in your highlights. If you’re photographing in an auto mode be careful as your camera could be lying to you by giving you the wrong exposure. Exposure compensation is your best friend in these situations.

There are so many interesting things on the beach to photograph and some of them take on a totally different look and feel when photographed as a silhouette. The stacked rocks have almost an alien world feel to them.

3: Details, details, details

The shoreline is like a fractal. The more closely you look, the more detail you see. Worlds within worlds. So why just photograph the big world everybody else is doing. Look at the details and sometimes some of the most interesting landscapes can be found there. Rocks and sand have so many beautiful textures on them but our favourite textures are to be found on old metal. When doing texture photography we look for old rusted structures wherever we go as they always give wonderful detailed images.

4: Polarising the light and filters

One of the must have filters for any outdoor photography is a polarising filter. A polariser will do so many things to both colour as well as black and white images. For our black and white beach photography we use it mostly to darken the sky. However it is also very useful for getting rid of reflections.

Slangkop lighthouse with a dark sky created by the polarising filter

The other filters we use in beach or any landscape photography are red or orange filters. This filter also darkens the sky (black and white photography only). We always have a UV filter on our lens to protect it as well. The protection is not just about damage either. Sea spray on your lens will degrade the contrast of the image and its so much easier to swap to a clean filter halfway through your shooting rather than trying to clean a lens in sandy sea spray conditions.

Be wary however of ‘stacking’ multiple filters on your lens. Unless they are the very expensive multi-coated variety, you will lose quality especially when photographing contre-jour. With wide-angle lenses you will also be adding a vignetting effect.

5: Neutral Density Filters for misty movement

Another technique is to use a long exposure to get a misty water movement. An ND filter will cut the light coming through your lens allowing you to do really long exposures that give the water a misty ethereal effect.

Don’t forget to use a stable tripod for these long exposures. Even the smallest bit of wind can cause subtle movement and ruin an otherwise perfect image. Usually, we try to put the tripod on rocks or really hard compacted sand to keep it totally steady.

If you are using film be aware of your exposure and reciprocity law failure and compensate accordingly. Depending on your exposure time you might even end up doubling the length of exposure to compensate. If you are not aware of reciprocity law then just bracket your exposures like mad.

Extra techniques – safety for you and your camera

The coastline and your camera don’t mix very well. Salty sea-spray will corrode your pride and joy so very quickly. Keep it out of the spray or sea mist as much as possible. This might mean keeping it in a bag when you’re not shooting or, if the spray is really fierce then put a clear plastic bag over it. (The ones you get for keeping food in work well.) Just cut a hole for the lens.

Be aware of changing lenses in areas where sand is blowing around. Once again sand and sensors don’t play well together.

Be aware of your surroundings. When we were photographing at Slangkop, I was so busy with an image that I didn’t see a very shifty looking person hovering around eyeing our stuff. Fortunately Ally was there, and some locals arrived too, so he scuttled off but if I was on my own things could have been very different.

Extra techniques – what settings should I use for best beach photography

We are doing a whole series on aperture, shutter and exposure compensation articles in this blog but the main thing about beach photography is that your camera can be fooled very easily. The bright sand and reflections off the sea make the camera think that there is more light than there really is so your images can turn out slightly underexposed. If in doubt, bracket a lot.

370,000 miles of unique possibilities

Around our planet there’s approximately 370,000 miles of coastline from stunning long sandy beaches to ragged cliffs. There is just so much variety and so many options to create unique and exciting images. Be safe, look for the less obvious and craft your own black and white beach photography and masterpieces every time.

The post Black and White Beach Photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

London at night is an awesome city. Lights, music, noise and a feeling of culture mixed with bohemian lifestyle. There are millions of images of London at night from the main tourist areas to dimly lit backstreets of East London where Jack the Ripper once stalked. So how can you do unique night photography in London? We would like to show you a few techniques we use to shoot London at night.

We are fortunate to live within an hour’s train ride away from the centre of the city and I, Tim, spend a lot of my life around there running Adobe training courses for business. Of course at the end of the day the last thing one wants to do is to go around creating images especially if it’s winter so Ally and I make special photography trips to London just to shoot. If you are visiting London from other areas there are lots of Airbnb places near the centre but even if you are further out, you can still get late night tubes (24 hours Friday and Saturday) or a night bus home when you’re ready.

A few tips before we start

Dress warmly as the river area can get particularly cold out of summer months.

Travel light – You will walk a lot so remember, the weight of your equipment is inversely proportionate to how far you can explore.

Try to walk as much as possible using maps and not the tube. You will discover more this way.

We rarely carry a large tripod at night, preferring to hold a mini tripod on a wall or other solid surface for long exposures.

London is relatively safe but don’t flaunt your equipment in deserted areas.

Movement with long exposures

Steady your camera against a solid object and use long exposures to get moving lights. The image of Parliament Square with the red bus blur was created by putting the camera on a small wall and using long exposures. Ally tripped the shutter just as the bus entered the scene with a 5 second exposure.

London Bus Blur long 5 second exposure

Long exposures of water at night are really effective especially if there are coloured lights in the scene. Ally actually hand-held the fountain one, just balancing it carefully on the edge of the fountain.

For more about long water exposures read our ND Filter article.

Long exposure of water in Trafalgar Square, London

Use reflections

London at night is just a mass of coloured lights and the river Thames (pronounced Tems) is perfect to reflect these lights. For more on why reflections can make awesome images read this article.

The view across the Thames to London city from Charing Cross bridge

I hand-held the image above from halfway across Charing Cross bridge. I was also aware of composition rules and used symmetry on the horizon as well as placing the largest buildings on the third. For more details about composition rules see our article on How to photograph like Arnold Newman

Look for the unusual

A few years ago I was out photographing by myself (Ally and our daughter India were at the ballet at the Royal opera house). I quite like ballet but I thought I’d go shooting instead. It was just after the terrorist attack in Paris at the magazine Charlie Hebdo. I came across this  memorial outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The person paying respects just happened along as I was taking the image.

Paying respects at Charlie Hebdo memorial

Use a narrow depth of field.

Try isolating subjects and get interesting out-of-focus light details. I used f2 on a very old leica 40mm lens on my Sony A7R to get the interesting bokeh donut highlights when I photographed this scene in a night market in Greenwich, London. The complementary colour scheme red/yellow and blue also helped.

Lights in Greenwich using narrow depth of field with aperture wide open

Finally

Doing night photography in London during summer is an absolute joy and you may find yourself photographing into the small hours, but the lack of sleep is far outweighed by the incredible images you create. London at night during winter is a totally different city however, and the main obstacle to photographing during winter nights is the cold. Enjoy your winter photography by stopping every so often at the numerous late night cafes around central London. Not only will you warm up but you might see interesting scenes that you would otherwise have missed.

The post Night Photography in London appeared first on ImageExplorers.

So, you’re out with your camera and you come across a really interesting landscape or scene. It looks good from every angle, but it’s not awesome. We’ve all been there and struggled with making an eye-catching image from a great, but not amazing, subject. How do we deal with this? Photograph reflections!

It seems like such a simple answer but adding a reflection to your image will lift it and give a depth that it didn’t have before. A beautiful reflection can add a sense of symmetry to your image, that can very often improve your composition. We’d like to give you some of our top tips on how to photograph reflections and where to find them.

The Obvious!

Ponds, lakes, and very still rivers. These are the usual tools to create interesting reflections, but they’re not the only source of photographic reflective goodness. Anything with a shiny surface can be used for beautiful symmetry and reflections.

Wivenhoe River – River Colne

It was a beautiful, blue sky but cold Autumn morning when we headed down towards the river from our house. With camera and tripod in hand with our trusty ND filter in the bag. We had hoped for a bank of mist hovering over the river as it sometimes does on the cold clear morning and were hoping to do some long exposures to capture the movement of the river in a misty form to complement the hovering mist. Unfortunately, when we got there, most of the mist had lifted and the river was very still.

Best laid plans etc … must get up earlier!

We decided to make the best of the situation and used the reflectivity of the still river to create images that gave the boats a symmetrical floating feel. We put the camera on the tripod and experimented with various exposures (including some 30 second exposures using the neutral density filter).

Symmetrical boats on the River Colne – 2.5 second exposure with an ND filter

Even though it wasn’t what we’d initially planned, Tim’s inner minimalist was overjoyed with the simplicity and symmetry of the final image. This one was converted to a black and white tone as we felt it worked really well. See our tips and geeky explanations for converting colour to black and white.

Not the Obvious – Shiny, Happy Surfaces!

Not all reflective images need to be from water. When we were photographing St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, Rome, we used the shininess of the cobbled street to photograph reflections of the lights which brought the foreground to life and also helped to lead the eye in to the main architectural details. We find that wet streets, after a short downpour can give beautiful results.

Cobbled shiny streets make for great photographic reflections of light

Life in a Puddle

Not every reflection requires a large pool of water. Keep an eye out for even the smallest puddle which will work if you photograph from a low enough vantage point. Our initial image of St Mark’s Square, Venice, would have been quite acceptable. However, towards evening the water starts to seep up from the canal creating small puddles in the square. We crouched down, much to the amusement of our fellow tourists, who thought we were trying to photograph the puddle itself, and used the puddle as a reflective surface during few second exposure. As we didn’t have a tripod with us, this exposure was hand-held by balancing the corner of the camera on the ground for stability.

The initial puddle

The scene from a low vantage point with the puddle in the foreground

Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa and Chewing Gum Hogging Baboons!

After an interesting day where Tim managed to get chased by a baboon that had stolen our fiery hot cinnamon chewing gum out of the car, we managed to capture the sunset dropping down behind Champagne Castle (the mountain) South Africa. As beautiful as it was, it still didn’t have that special something, until we found a small pond and used the reflection to create a symmetrical mountain landscape.

Beautiful symmetry using the lake in the foreground

Spyglass in Paris

During our trip up the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, we were on the lookout for something a little bit different to the usual aerial views over Paris. Tim spotted the spyglass reflections and immediately honed in on the glow of the orange sunset reflected in the metal contrasting beautifully against the dark blue of the Paris skyline.

Sunset reflected into the metal of the telescope adding a strip of red to bring the image to life

Reflective Symmetry to Mess with the Mind

Photographing reflections can lead to really interesting images. Look at the image below to see what we mean.

Now scroll down to see how the scene actually looked.

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Makes your head hurt, doesn’t it? Flipping photographic reflections upside down can create some really interesting, mind-bending images. Have a look at the master photographer, Andre Kertesz’s, classic images for many more examples.

Colours in Movement

You can capture movement during your long neutral-density filter exposure but don’t forget you can also use it to display stunning reflective colours without the reflected detail. This 20 second exposure removes all the reflections of the mountain but keeps the orange sunset.

2o second exposure with ND filter showing movement in the water but also the beautiful colours of the sky

See here for our tips on buying and using an ND filter. If your sky is a little on the light side, see how to retrieve using Camera Raw.

Go Forth and Reflect!

To bear in mind: a reflection can be fleeting, depending on the source of the reflection. A rain shower can cause a puddle that will disappear; moving water will give a completely different feel to glassy, still water; cobbled streets can give a textured matt feeling or a shiny reflective image, depending on the wetness or dampness of the street.

Next time you are out looking at land or cityscapes, keep an eye out for any surface that can be used for a photographic reflection. Try something a bit different – change your angles, change your viewing position, climb up high and go down low … experiment and have some fun!

The post How to Photograph Reflections that will totally improve your photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

When you walk into a camera store or look at an online photographic shop there are so many filters for black and white photography that you could buy. The problem is, which one?! What actually makes a good black and white photograph and how can I achieve that? Do you buy into a filter “system” or buy individual filters? The people in the store might or might not know which ones are right for your type of photography.

When I first started photography in the days of film (click this link to see the best black and white film for travel photography), I was so overwhelmed by the vast array of filters that I spent a lot of money on buying up as many as possible. My thinking behind this was that it would improve my photography. I am now older and marginally less stupid but I have learned from years of trial and error.

Here are some of our really essential filters for black and white and colour photography as well as our shameful ones!

There are 5 essential filters for black and white photography that every photographer should own. I’d like to show you them now and explain what each one does and why you need it. If you’ve got some time on your hands and want to know tips and geeky explanations on how to convert colour to black and white, then click that << link!

Using Polariser to darken the sky

The UV or Haze or Skylight Filter

The first filter I am going to recommend is one I always buy for any new lens I get. This filter has 2 main reasons to live on your lens.

Firstly: Protection – I can’t count the number of times I have “dinked” the front glass on my lenses.

Sometimes it’s as simple as a quick knock against my belt when carrying the camera. (We use awesome sling type straps that go across your body. Ally swears hers is the best thing ever and is attached to it like an umbilical cord. She uses a Ladies Black Rapid. I have a Sun Sniper.) I once scratched my Nikon lens coating when putting the lens cap back on the lens. Having  just finished photographing, the rain was about to bucket down, and I was in a hurry. This does not excuse my not having a protector UV filter on the lens.

A filter is also easier to clean than a lens element. I have even dipped mine in water to wash off salt or dust after photographing waves or deserts.

Pro Tip: When photographing in areas that really dirty up your lens (like sea spray) carry a spare filter and change filters when the first gets dirty. It’s faster than trying to clean a lens in an inhospitable environment.

Whenever I buy a new lens the very next thing I buy is a UV filter. $50 to $100 for a high quality filter that doesn’t seem to do much might seem extortionate but if it saves the very soft (and very expensive) lens coating from just one scratch it will be worth it.

Secondly: Sharper and more defined details in the background – A UV filter cuts out the UV light and cuts through the haze making distance objects seem clearer.  With film it is more important to use a UV filter because film is extremely sensitive to UV light. However, digital sensors are generally less sensitive to UV.

This filter works the same with both colour and black and white photography.

Lastly, the UV haze filter is not to be confused with the UV transmitting filter. This only allows ultraviolet light to pass through the lens and blocks out all the other visible light spectrum.

See more useful photography articles here

The graduated filter (Grad)

The graduated filter is the next one in the list, for this filters for black and white photography post. A graduated filter is a neutral density filter that gradually fades to clear. The reason for this is that most skies are darker than the land so the graduated filter darkens the sky but not the land. See more explanations on this with our exposure compensation post, and ‘why your camera lies to you’!

Round screw or system grad filter?

These filters come in either a round screw in version or as a “system” version where you attach a filter holder to the front of the lens and then slot in the square filter of choice. The advantage of this type of filter is that you can slide the filter up or down depending on the amount of darkening you require. The other advantage is you buy different size adaptor rings for the system types that means you don’t have to fork out for multiple filters, only new adaptor rings. Both types of filter allow you to spin them around.

Graduated filters for black & white film photography

The Grad filters come in various strengths of darkening. Buy some cheap ones to experiment with first before spending a lot on one.

In my young college days these Cokin filter systems were all the rage, and from my extensive Cokin system, the grad was used more than anything.

While this filter works just as well in colour photography as it does in black and white there are a few other grads that work in colour too. I used to use a tobacco (orange/brown) to get warmer low sun photographs or a blue/purple to get more interesting cloudy skies.

The Neutral density filter (ND)

One of our favourite creative filters for black and white photography is the Neutral Density filter. It reduces the amount of light coming through the lens thus giving you longer exposures that you are unable to get in bright light even with an ISO of 50.

Why would you want longer exposures?

It will capture movement rather than freezing it. This could be either water, people, vehicles, clouds or anything that moves. On water this produces an ethereal misty effect and with people it can produce water-like blurs. It is very effective if some people are moving and some totally still. We have used this filter a number of times for dramatic effect on water. See our post on how we got on (or not) when we first used our ND filter recently.

Just make sure you have a very sturdy tripod as it’s so easy to get a blurry image with even the smallest bit of camera shake during a 30 second exposure. See our tutorial on how to photograph with an ND filter.

This filter works just as well in colour as in black and white photography.

Single colour filters for Black and white film

Black and white film uses a full range of the visible colour spectrum to create a full range of tones on your black and white negative. What a single colour filter does is to stop some of those colours from reaching the film and thereby making that area darker. For example, the filter we need to use to darken the sky would be one that stops blue reaching the film. Yellow, orange and red colours are opposite blue and so do this very effectively. A blue filter would darken reds and make the blues appear lighter. See our post on how to darken skies for more details on single colour filters.

Filter system of single colours for black and white photography

Buy a full range of cheap filters and try them out to see what you get before committing more money to them.

The Polarizing filter

There are 2 main uses for polarizing filters, reducing reflections and darkening skies.

Here is how it works. Light reflected from a non-metallic surface becomes polarized. A polarizing filter allows light to pass in only one direction. This allows us to reduce reflections on non-metallic objects.

Light from the sky is also polarized, so a polarizing filter will polarize the light and reduce how much light enters the camera. As a result this will make the sky dark in a photo.

Photograph taken without and with polarizing filter

A polarizer will darken down blue sky but not affect clouds. (The effect is most prevalent on the area of sky that is at 90 degrees from the sun – Look at the sun – carefully – and then the darkest sky will be at 90 degrees.) It will also reduce reflections which can make trees etc seem rather vivid in colour. To use the polarizer just turn the filter until the sky goes dark or the reflections disappear.

A few things to be aware of with polarizing filters

This polarizing filter technique will work with both film and digital, colour and black and white. In colour it also increases the saturation of many objects by reducing reflections.

There are 2 types of polarizer. A linear and a circular. A circular CPL polarizer is best for modern cameras as linear polarizers can affect exposure meters and autofocus adversely.

Filters can create so many effects and as we have discovered in our photographic adventures, not all are good. With these 5 essential filters to start your collection off though, you just can’t go wrong. What do you think of our choice of essential filters for black and white photography? Are there any you think we should add to the list? Do you have an embarrassing collection worse than ours? Let us know in the comments below.

Above all else, just go out and create photographs that make you happy.

See our Top 10 Essential Photoshop shortcuts.

Tim’s Adobe and Affinity courses

Click here to get huge money off savings on Tim’s Udemy courses for Photoshop on the iPad and Affinity Photo v2.

The post 5 essential filters for black and white photography you should own appeared first on ImageExplorers.

A lot people who try to photograph the moon get problems with an overly bright moon, but not enough detail around it. The main problem is when you take a photograph of the moon at night, the moon comes out so bright you cannot see the details in it. It could even be so bright that it looks like the sun. So how do you photograph the moon?

Overexposed moon almost looks like the sun

Well the first thing to look at is exposure. The moon is lit by the same sunlight as the earth is during the day, so the exposure for the moon itself is similar to earth daylight. Let me explain:

When the sun is out on a nice day on earth you might use an exposure of 1/125 sec at f8 at 200 ISO or something similar. Well, when you look at the moon during ‘our’ night you are seeinging the moon during its daytime, so the exposure for the moon during daylight is probably also about  1/125 sec at f8 at 200 ISO or something similar. The problem we have, is that the scene you want to shoot is maybe 1/8 sec at f5.6 at an ISO of 1600 (because it’s night time and dark).

Whatever you do, don’t use an auto exposure setting on your camera as this will give you a totally overexposed image. See our why your camera lies to you post for more details.

So how do you get around that?

Use 2 photographs and put them together in Photoshop. Take one image before the moon has risen (or is out of shot) using the correct exposure for night-time. Take a second photograph of the moon, but use an exposure that is more compatible with shooting a normal daylight scene. I would bracket (take multiple images with varying exposures) to get the perfect moon exposure.

Original scene before adding a photograph of the moon

Photograph the moon with normal daylight exposures

What about an eclipse?

These do need a bit of bracketing as exposures change during the eclipse. This Red Moon Eclipse at the top of this post was shot at 2 seconds at f9 with an ISO of 800. You might just need to experiment.

Putting the photograph of the moon into any scene.

The first thing we’re going to do is to drag the moon photograph into the selected scene in Photoshop. It doesn’t matter where it goes as we can move it later. You can even resize it a bit if you need.

Drag the photograph of the moon onto your scene as a new layer

Now let us change the mode in the layers panel to Screen. Screen hides the darker areas of the layer and only shows the lighter, so your dark black sky now disappears.

Change the photograph of the moon layer to screen mode

Move the photograph of the moon layer to required position

At this point you could just stop as your moon looks great, but what about a subtle moon reflection on the sea?

Putting in the moon reflection

Let’s start with a selection. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just a rough shape of where the reflection might be.

A photograph of the moon needs a reflection to make it believable, so start with a selection

Use the adjustment menu in the bottom of the layers panel to add a levels adjustment. Lighten the area with levels. The selection automatically generates a mask, so only selected area will be affected.

Add a Levels adjustment layer in the layers panel

Drag the middle arrow slider to the left to lighten masked area

Looks a bit rough right? Well now, if you double click the layer mask you will get to the mask options. Choose feather to soften the edge of the ‘reflection’ to taste. Remember subtlety is the key.

Feather will soften your harsh mask edge

Now just dial back the amount of reflection on the sea using the opacity slider on the layers menu.

Reduce the reflection of the moon with the opacity

Eh voilà A perfectly exposed moon as well as a perfectly exposed scene.

I hope you enjoyed this how to photograph the moon tutorial. Whenever I go out on a clear night, I will often photograph the moon as you never know when it will come in handy for a picture. For an idea of what the moon phase will be take a look at the time and date web site.

The post How to photograph the moon appeared first on ImageExplorers.

A Neutral Density filter reduces the amount of light coming through the lens thus giving you longer exposures that you are unable to get in bright light even with an ISO of 50.

Why would you want longer exposures?

It will capture movement rather than freezing it. This could be either water, people, vehicles or anything that moves. On water this produces an ethereal misty effect and with people it can produce water-like blurs. Very effective if some people are moving and some totally still. We have used this filter a number of times for dramatic effect. Our Shongweni Dam images would have been nothing special without it and it made our Drakensberg images really unusual.

Shongweni Dam, South Africa –  with a normal exposure freezing the water is nothing special.

Shongweni Dam South Africa with nd filter and long exposure to add magic to image.

See our post on using this filter for the first time at Shongweni Dam.

Bushmans Nek, Drakensberg, South Africa – Long Exposure with neutral density filter to smooth out water.

What to buy

They come in a variety of stop options, as small as 0.3 of a stop up to a whopping 24 stops. Therefore, with a 10 stop ND filter, your exposure of 1/60 sec at f16 becomes 15 seconds at f16 or 30 seconds at f22 and so on. If you’re not sure which one to get there is also a variable variety. Prices range from cheap eBay plastic versions, through to glass ones that can carry a heavy price tag, by main filter manufacturers.

Doing it on the cheap

If you don’t want to spend any money on a filter before you’re sure you will use one, a quick hack is to buy a plastic welding lens glass for a small amount of change. Attach this to an existing filter with blue tack or modelling clay. Anything to keep the light from entering the gap between the filter and the welding glass. Not the highest quality of filter but it will give you some interesting results for very little money.

Use a tripod

Setting up your image the way you wish to a tripod is essential.

Depending on the brightness of your screen with the filter on you may be able to focus but otherwise focus without it. Then pop your filter on, and set your exposure. You can either do this by working out what it is before putting the Neutral Density filter on then stopping down your shutter speed the number of stops of your filter, or working it out with the light meter when the ND filter is on. Experiment and have fun.

The post How to photograph with a Neutral Density filter tutorial appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Do you ever wake up and think “This is going to be a great day for photography?” We woke up just like that. Well…… the day didn’t start out quite like that though. Little did we know the struggle for beautiful images we would have when we, armed with a new shiny ND filter and a travel tripod, set off for a day’s photography.

Read most blogs on photographing people and you will be told to go to a place where people are relaxed and don’t mind too much if you take their photograph. A market sounds like just the thing.

At Shongweni farmers market (Kwa-Zulu Natal, in South Africa) our hopes for a long exposure image with moving people were very high. Set up the camera on a tripod with an interesting row of stalls behind and use the ND filter to get long 30 second exposures that will turn the moving people into a water like flow … This was the plan! Easy huh! We’ve visited this market a few times and always take advantage of a great breakfast out. Full of food stalls, crafts and food this place is brilliant for shopping, eating and listening to music.

So here is where I tell you about all our amazing images we created…. Errr no. So very disappointed. Tim tried doing a long exposure to get people in motion but the images didn’t really look great. The stall holders were not doing much crafting either, only selling, so no nice creator photographs. The only saving grace to be had however, was a beautiful view across the valley of a waterfall and an accordion player.

What about the live musicians?

Maybe some good photographs there? I really believed that there was an image to be made there somewhere and after a lot of difficult searching the best one I found was from behind the guitar guy with a narrow depth of field (f2.8 at the 70 mm end of my zoom lens), so the audience was out of focus. I popped it into black and white and whilst not award winning I was pleased with the result, but it was a struggle. See our post on what makes a good black and white image.

The moral of the story is? Sometimes the incredible is not going to happen and we just have to do the best we can with what we have.

On to part 2 of the day and not very far away in Shongweni Dam.

Test Driving the new (Neutral Density) ND Filter and the incredible just happened.

Have you ever tried to photograph a dam? They can produce very graphical images. However the large slabs of concrete with “frozen” water droplets are the same images that everybody else shoots on their smartphone. We approached the dam with a bit of trepidation after our disappointing start to the photographic day.

Shonegweni dam is accessible by driving through a rural village with many cows and goats on the road (very picturesque looking but all the little shops along the roadside had bars across the front and a small gap through which to pass money and goods between shopkeeper and customers). Not sure this is a good place to brandish our camera equipment.

After being chased down by the park warden for our entrance fee – (how were we to know we had to stop and sign in if they don’t put up big signs) – we were there.

It’s R40 (about £2.40) each to go in and the dam is home to some spectacular views. We test drove our new  ND filter which allows you to have longer exposures, thus giving you great effects on water. After photographing in the hot sun for a while we knew we had something special.  You can drive down one side where you see the tumbling waters over the dam. We photographed mostly using the ND filter to get the milky water effect which you can see as well as the moving clouds.

Here is the link to our nd filter tutorial so you can see how we did it.

Finally!!! Something we’re proud to call our images.

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Tourist free photography! Impossible you cry! Not impossible we say!

During our short Italian trip, we had a few days in Venice and were desperate not to “just photograph” the gondolas but to create something a bit more special. Here’s how to do it:

Prepare yourself the night before by having a nice couple of glasses of wine and either … set your alarm for 3 am! And then again for 4 am. That way when it first goes off, you can say “yay! I have another hour in bed!” Or don’t go to bed at all! (The time you need to get up will depend on the time of year and when it will be light).

Ensure you have a tripod. Stumble your way down to the waterfront (can you tell I’m not a morning person?) You may have to vie for a spot with other photographers, then wait for the sun to come up. You could try doing some long exposures to give the misty water effect but this will give you movement on the gondolas. Alternatively you can do shorter exposures to freeze the gondolas. You may need to get creative with exposures to get all the detail in the sky. See here on why your camera lies to you!

As you can see from our image we had a reasonable exposure so we went mid-range and got a little movement on the gondolas. Once the sun’s up and the crowds appear, go treat yourself to a large Italian coffee and breakfast … or more sleep!

See here for our favourite Top 10 Photoshop Shortcuts.

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