Scott Fisher’s very brief trip to Iceland was nevertheless rewarding

In Landscapes, Scenes & Scenarios by Sean Widker

As a professional video producer/editor based in Boston, Scott Fisher has also taken on landscape photography as a serious hobby to help him learn more about framing and exposure. “I realized a few years ago how using filters would step up my game as a landscape photographer. I have always used neutral density filters in my video work so I was a bit embarrassed that it took me so long to start using them in my still photography. “I currently …

View Post

Explaining how to determine correct exposures for long exposure images

In Corporate/Commercial, Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Portraits, Scenes & Scenarios by Cole Thompson

An acknowledged master of long-exposure photography, Cole Thompson shares his techniques for finding his “correct” exposure, and extrapolating that to dramatically longer exposure times. Getting the correct exposure when using one or more neutral density filters can be challenging. I use up to 18 stops of ND with exposures ranging from 30 seconds to 8 minutes. At first finding the correct exposure was very frustrating and my images were often underexposed and I’d have to resort to guessing at the …

View Post

Going to Olympic National Park and braving the threat of vampires, werewolves and heavy rainfall

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Polarizing Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Brian Rueb

From the time I started taking landscape images, there’s been something mysteriously drawing me to Olympic National Park, but it wasn’t the vampires and werewolves described in the Twilight books. The rugged Washington coastline with its craggy sea stacks and rough seas looked like just the place to make dramatic images. The only issue was the weather. When author Stephenie Meyer wrote the Twilight books, she picked the part of the lower 48 states with the highest annual rainfall. She …

View Post

Discussing what I’ve learned from previous trips

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Polarizing Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Brian Rueb

As I prepare for my fourth trip to Iceland — the third time I will be serving as a guide for other photographers — I’ve given a lot of thought to what I’ve learned to this point. I can also draw upon my previous experience leading workshops to almost every corner of this country. I’ve spent some time considering how I might improve on the way I shot these locations before, and how I’ll guide the other photographers to do …

View Post

Iceland’s Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Polarizing Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by E.J. Peiker

As I was packing for my trip to Iceland last winter, I decided at the very last second to include my Singh-Ray Vari-ND. I thought that maybe it would come in handy on some waterfalls. One of the major highlights of any trip to Iceland is visiting the magnificent Glacial Lagoon called Jokulsarlon on the southeastern shores of this island nation. This is an area where Europe’s largest Glacier, Vatnajokul, has an arm that extends toward the North Atlantic and …

View Post

How super-simple it is to create extremely-long exposures with the new 10-Stop Mor-Slo ND filter

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Polarizing Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Tom Bol

There have been so many times when I’ve found myself at an impressive river scene or rocky coast line with the mid-day sun beaming straight down. Very bright light creates a challenge for me since I like to shoot rivers, streams, water falls, and seashore surf at very slow shutter speeds to get that soft-silky look to the moving water. In such situations, I like to expose my image for 10 seconds or longer. But even if I set my …

View Post

Taking Singh-Ray filters along on a crazy road trip

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Polarizing Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Don Smith

Although most of my stock shooting trips are planned well in advance, this time I discovered that I had an unexpected open week on my schedule that would begin in less than 36 hours. Just enough time to plan my journey. Joined by my friend and fellow photographer, C.W. McGowen, we set out to capture various coastal and inland locations spanning a wide area of Northern California and Oregon. These were locations that were on my ‘bucket list,’ and weather …

View Post

Finding the Singh-Ray Filters even more useful

In Equipment & Technique, ND Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Bob Krist

One reason I’ve survived for over 35 years in the competitive world of freelance photography is my ability to read the writing on the wall. It’s just an awareness to cues about impending change that are given by the marketplace, cues that many will ignore. For example, I used to do a lot of photography for corporate annual reports. Before the internet, a publicly-owned company presented its face to the investing community with a glossy annual magazine-like publication that stated …

View Post

Tony Sweet finds Singh-Ray’s 10-Stop Mor-Slo filter delivers long-exposures without all the clean-up

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Tony Sweet

There is an obvious color cast — mostly strong magenta — that can sometimes be dramatic and nice, and at other times dramatic and problematic. Rather than taking time to color correct such images on the computer, which can be quite time consuming with less than acceptable results, I’ve opted more often to converting the image to black and white, which works to my satisfaction much of the time. But, what if color is the reason for making the image? …

View Post

Marking my first decade as a nature photographer with eight-day trip to the Canadian Rockies

In Equipment & Technique, Landscapes, ND Filters, Polarizing Filters, Scenes & Scenarios by Jackson Echols

I was 19 and determined to become a nature photographer as well as a studio artist. Last May, I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts — concentrating in Photography — from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I am now a fine arts graduate student at the University of Texas at Arlington expecting to graduate in 2014. As I have advanced in my studies, I have remained undecided on my future career path to becoming a professional nature photographer. …