Posts Tagged ‘Graduated Neutral Density Filters’

Applying digital filters to photos, particularly photos taken using a phone, is extremely popular. You can achieve many effects in modern software that previously required photographers to use a physical filter in front of the camera's lens.

However, this doesn't mean you should dismiss the use of physical filters. Some effects can't be replicated in software. And even if the effect can be duplicated, it still won't give quite the same result. In this article we'll look at some creative reasons why you should give physical filters a try.

Particularly for landscape photography, you can often come across a scene where the range of light is too great for your camera to capture. You end up having to choose between a properly exposed landscape and a blown-out white sky, or a properly exposed sky with a black silhouette of a landscape.

Photo with no filter - the landscape is exposed correctly, but the sky is too bright

One solution to this problem is graduated neutral density filters.

Photo taken with a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky

These filters can be attached to the end of your camera's lens, with one half fully transparent, while the other half is darker. You position the filter so the darker half is over the area of the photo you want to reduce the exposure of (e.g. the sky).