Photo Art vs Photography and Filters

With the world of digital photography and the ever growing capabilities of cameras and computer software tricks one can employ to make better or unique images comes the point of more is less and less is more. When I first jumped into the digital fray I thought I could just do everything like I did when I shot film. Needless to say my journey into digital photography was met with many setbacks in one way or another.

While the basic concepts stayed pretty much the same, techniques had to change and the mental process of how I expose an image drastically changed. Over time cameras have advanced leaps and bounds and alongside that, imaging software has grown in size and wizardry. In fact, I think that instead of making things easier, the technology has in some ways compounded the process of creating great images.

Being a outdoor landscape and nature photographer I strive to make my images appear as they did the moment I saw them as natural as possible. I did this with film and I continue to do this digitally. I want the process of making an image to be 80% done in the camera if possible maybe a little more, but I know I will have to do some post processing of my images in software to make them as perfect as the real scene I photographed. I feel this is the point where a photographer can change their focus from being as pure a photographer as possible or become a photo-artist.

To define the difference between the two would be to enter a fuzzy grey zone, but for myself I define it as follows; A photographer is one who relies mostly upon their ability to compose and expose an image as expertly as possible using only the basic rules of composition and techniques of photography in the camera, only using post production to size, clean and proof images for the resulting photograph. A Photo-Artist captures one image with their camera utilizing many if not all of the same techniques of the photographer but when they enter post production the image can and often will change into an image the artist had in their imagination and taking on characteristics that are too good to be true.

I am in no way saying that the Photo-Artist is in any way the lesser of the two, rather I am just defining the differences of how the two work. I appreciate Photo-Art and often try to do it myself, but know that at this point my expertise with imaging software beyond fixing dust spots and correcting tone or cropping is vastly limited.

In an earlier article I talked about what HDR is and how I understand it is accomplished with imaging software but it was only my understanding from my limited experience with it. I am asked by friends who are starting out in photography or expanding their knowledge how I accomplish the same results without utilizing HDR software or techniques in imaging software.

I often surprise them with the simplistic approach I take to photographing nature in that I utilize the basic concepts of exposure and composition, just as I did when I shot film. When I shot film I made a promise to myself not to use anything that would result in an image that had unreal or un-natural effects. I wanted to be able to capture the scenery I saw the way it was and to leave the image unaltered as much as possible.

End of lens filters were and still are a large part of photography. The great pioneer Ansel Adams didn’t shy away from using filters in his work, nor did he shy away from applying some magic in the darkroom. One of the techniques he pioneered was the “Zone System” which allowed photographers to more accurately create images that emulated what our eyes could see when we composed our images in natural lighting.

The type of filtering Adams used were corrective filters that filtered out wavelengths of light that the camera and film could not do as naturally as our eyes and minds could. I try and do much the same with my own photography. Instead of using filters that may add rainbows, stars and other effects that do not or did not appear naturally in the scene or add colors other effects that changed the image to appear somewhat naturally as different in time of day, season or effected by weather.

When I use filters, I use them to correct for the limitations all cameras posses with accurately balancing different types of light in different types of conditions. Our eyes can adjust to register millions if not more differences in light so that we see things clearly with natural colors and tones. The camera can only balance a small fraction of the light our eyes can see.

To help my camera correct for its limitations I use filters more commonly called corrective filters. Polarizing, Neutral Density Filters, Color Intensifiers, or enhancing filters do exactly that. They correct how the camera and sensor see light and render images closer to how we would with our naked eye. Just as our eyes often are over loaded with light forcing us to wear shaded or sunglasses our cameras are even more sensitive.

When choosing glasses for your eyes you try to pick out the best optical quality and therefore you would obviously want the same for your camera. When I buy filters and use them on my camera I want the best optical quality to have the most natural results. I use Singh Ray filters on all of my lenses for two reasons. Because I own lenses with varying diameters and sometimes use more than one filter at a time, I want to only buy each filter once due to the expense of each filter. Now to simplify that even more I use two particular filters only. I use the Singh Ray Color Intensifying Polarizer and the Singh Ray 3 Stop Soft Step Gradual Neutral Density filter.

The Polarizer does exactly what it sounds like it does, but the Neutral Density filter is the real magic maker. It allows me to shoot balanced exposures in High Contrast Lighting or High Dynamic Range while balancing the exposures.

This is a point that computer software and HDR techniques come in. While there are programs that do the job, I have found in many cases the results don’t come out as natural as I would want and I end up spending even more time in front of a computer working on images I could have balanced just as effectively in a fraction of the time using corrective filters on the lens. Note, you can achieve the same natural results, but the technique while touted as simple often take far more time to master consistently and you end up using up more memory space on your digital cards that could be holding more images of different compositions.

Neutral density graduated filters are given numbers which tell you exactly how many stops of light they're going to reduce the brightness by. The filters come in three strengths, although there are two ways used by different manufacturers of indicating those strengths:

The whole reason for using a neutral density graduated filter is to control the exposure difference between the sky and the ground, so we need to take control of the light metering to make full use of the effect. Ideally, we set our cameras to full manual so that the settings don't change when we start using the filter.

The first step is to determine the strength of filter we need. The simplest method is to take a meter reading with the ground filling the whole of the frame without the filter in place. Now repeat this step but this time with the sky filling the frame. The difference between these two readings will indicate the strength of graduated filter that you need. A 1-stop difference in the readings will need a 0.3 ND graduated filter, a 2-stop difference a 0.6 ND grad, while a 3-stop difference will require a 0.9 ND grad. The most often used filter for me is the 3-stop (0.9 ND one), with the 2-stop (0.6 ND) being used only occasionally. I rarely ever use my ND Grad filter in conjunction with a Polarizing filter.

So, if you're only going to buy one graduated neutral density filter, the 0.9 ND ( 3 Stop SS ND Grad ) is the one to buy. The soft step makes the graduation of the filter more natural and easier over all to work with so that we do not need to hide the point where the lens gets darker or lighter as much or at all.

Once we have decided on the filter we need, use the meter reading we took from the foreground to take our shot. All graduated filters need careful positioning to get the best effect.

To make the most of this our camera, affix the camera securely to a tripod. This is always a good idea for landscape shots anyway. This allows us to slide the filter accurately into position, so the transition from clear to dark falls on the horizon. If our camera has a depth-of-field preview facility that stops the lens down while we are looking through the viewfinder then use it. The darker viewfinder image will make it easier to see the position of the filter.

Important note! If we are using a Polarizing filter with the ND Grad, we need to consider the dramatic drop in light so consider using a ND Grad filter that is not as strong such as the 0.06 ND or 2 Stop SS ND Grad.

It is my opinion that using corrective filters over post production renders more natural images. For one, you can compare the resulting image with the real scene with our own eyes while still at the location where once we leave the location and get in front of a computer screen, we’re left to our memory or imagination which is not always correct.