River Shot

I was playing around with my filters near the river and I have no

idea how this shot should have turned out. It also didn't help that

it was 18 degrees outside and I decided not to wear my jacket, so

trying to keep the camera still was a little more difficult than

usual. Yes, I actually got cold this time...must have be the wind

chill factor...anyway, any advice on shooting water shots with

filters would be appreciated. Thanks.

The green sky and the purple water do make for an unusual image. As an experiment, it's certainly doing its job of letting you see how your filters affect your pictures. Only you can say whether the result is something you want to create again. It's not natural looking, but then it's not really hideous, either. My own taste is to use only polarizing and neutral density filters when shooting water. The UV filter shouldn't have much effect on the image. Most people, myself included, use them to protect the lens glass from carelessness and/or clumsiness. But when I want ultimate sharpness, the UV filter comes off.

 

One thing here really does need fixing. The mottled sky is an obvious postprocessing artifact, probably caused by the use of unsharp mask. The sky should usually be masked out when sharpening.

The main use for the ND filter is to bring the sky down in brightness so you'll have some parity in exposure between the foreground and the sky. It looks like you've achieved that here. Michael is right about the UV filter. Oh, it has some effectiveness in reducing the cyan cast imparted by ultraviolet light but it's usually a minor problem, especially now that we have computer manipulation of the images available to us.

 

What I'm saying is that you definitely have the idea and now you must work with it to arrive at a point where you like and understand what an ND filter does. It just darkens down parts of the picture that are usually too bright. The polarizer can help eliminate reflections. Almost everything, not just water, reflects light and eliminating reflections enhances saturation of hues and darker values. Part of Kenneth's secret for the intensely saturated images he makes is that he almost always uses the polarizer. Unfortunately, the polarizer causes a two-stop loss of light, more or less, so you have to be prepared to deal with that. We have to do that by almost always using a tripod unless it's bright daylight.

 

This is a good first attempt with your filters. What you should do is shoot both with and without each time so that you may see the effect the filter actually has in each case. It takes more film but it's the only way to experience the advantages of using the filters. Keep shooting!

Thanks you guys for your suggestions. I have all these Cokin filters and have read what they are supposed to do, but I guess you just have to screw up to learn how to do something right eventually. I have the polorizing filter and the Grad ND filter mentioned, but I have been too nervous to attempt to use them because I hate the idea of messing up which is actually something I am quite proficient at doing. I also was not aware that the UV filter would not do anything other than protect the lens. A friend suggested I keep it on the lens all the time. So correct me if I am wrong in hearing that for water shots such as this, I should take the UV filter off. Little things like this help me a lot, and I truly appreciate it. You may not see much improvement, but I am a "work in progress." Thanks again.

Like they said, Lisa keep shooting and keep working with the PS. You are really not far off from some great work here. This is a beautiful scene and I hope you can do it again.

Lisa, Any filter will degrade the image to some extent, just because it's a piece of imperfect glass (or plasic) in front of the lens. When you want the absolute best sharpness you can get, you use a tripod & cable release, shield the camera from wind and vibration, lock up the mirror, and remove all filters. Of all the things done to increase sharpness, removing the filters is easily the least effective. The difference in sharpness between a picture with a UV filter and one without will very difficult to notice, and for most of us impossible, without a loupe (or the Photoshop equivalent). I have even heard it argued that a speck of dust on the lens will cause more degradation than the same speck on a filter. If that's true, a filter may even increase sharpness.

All this to say, leave that protection filter on the lens unless you have real reason to pull it off. And shooting water is not a reason to remove it.

All this, by the way, refers to screw-on filters and does not apply to Cokin filters. Because of the way they attach to the lens, you would not consider just leaving them there all the time, and so they would not be used as simple protectors.

In order to be a good photographer, he/she has to meet two basic requirements: able to 'see' the picture and the ability to 'make' the picture. Someone is more gifted than the other. I once met a lady whose pictures blew my mind off, but she has absolutely no idea how a camera works - she just used the auto mode and let her creatitivity took over, and the new generation of cameras take the technical burden off her.

 

Yes, the color is not exactly right in this image, but I can see the rapid progress in your visualization. You have demonstrated that you can 'see' better than your first few images in this Circle. My suggestions: keep your equipment to a minimum unless you really neeeds them to take a picture, as they will stand in your way of creativity. Keep on shooting and enjoy it.