Exploring Locations

Learning Outcomes:

What Is Landscape Photography?

Landscape photography is intended to show different spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes, especially within contemporary photography. Landscape photographers often attempt to document the space as well as convey an appreciation of the scenery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_photography

Techniques of Landscape Photography

. Make sure to have a DSLR with at least a 10 mega pixel sensor size.
. The amount of pixels determines the amount of image detail.
. Larger pixels capture a greater dynamic range and produce images with less digital noise.
. DSLRs with changeable lenses and varying shooting modes give landscape photographers the greatest flexibility.

Lenses:

https://www.ilexinstant.com/shop/advanced-digital-landscape-photography-equipment-techniques

Filters:

Filters are used to add gradient and contrast to images, they can give dramatic skys, reduce glare and vignetting even make glass seem invisible and reduce reflection.

Here is an article I have found: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-lens-filters.htm

LINEAR & CIRCULAR POLARIZING FILTERS

Polarizing filters (aka "polarizers") are perhaps the most important of any filter for landscape photography. They work by reducing the amount of reflected light that passes to your camera's sensor. Similar to polarizing sunglasses, polarizers will make skies appear deeper blue, will reduce glare and reflections off of water and other surfaces, and will reduce the contrast between land and sky.

		Polarizer at Max

two separate handheld photos taken seconds apart

Note how the sky becomes a much darker blue, and how the foliage/rocks acquire slightly more color saturation. The intensity of the polarizing effect can be varied by slowly rotating your polarizing filter, although no more than 180° of rotation is needed, since beyond this the possible intensities repeat. Use your camera's viewfinder (or rear LCD screen) to view the effect as you rotate the polarizing filter.

Example of a Polarizing Filter Producing an Uneven Sky

The polarizing effect may also increase or decrease substantially depending on the direction your camera is pointed and the position of the sun in the sky. The effect is strongest when your camera is aimed in a direction which is perpendicular to the direction of the sun's incoming light. This means that if the sun is directly overhead, the polarizing effect will be greatest near the horizon in all directions.

However, polarizing filters should be used with caution because they may adversely affect the photo. Polarizers dramatically reduce the amount of light reaching the camera's sensor — often by 2-3 f-stops (1/4 to 1/8 the amount of light). This means that the risk of a blurred handheld image goes up dramatically, and may make some action shots prohibitive.

Additionally, using a polarizer on a wide angle lens can produce an uneven or unrealistic looking sky which visibly darkens. In the example to the left, the sky could be considered unusually uneven and too dark at the top.

Linear vs. Circular Polarizing Filters: The circular polarizing variety is designed so that the camera's metering and autofocus systems can still function. Linear polarizers are much less expensive, but cannot be used with cameras that have through-the-lens (TTL) metering and autofocus — meaning nearly all digital SLR cameras. One could of course forego metering and autofocus, but that is rarely desirable.

NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTERS

Neutral density (ND) filters uniformly reduce the amount of light reaching the camera's sensor. This is useful when a sufficiently long exposure time is not otherwise attainable within a given range of possible apertures (at the lowest ISO setting).

Situations where ND filters are particularly useful include:

Smoothing water movement in waterfalls, rivers, oceans, etc.
Achieving a shallower depth of field in very bright light
Reducing diffraction (which reduces sharpness) by enabling a larger aperture
Making moving objects less apparent or not visible (such as people or cars)
Introducing blur to convey motion with moving subjects

example photo using a neutral density filter to smooth water

photo with a smoothed water effect from a long exposure

However, only use ND filters when absolutely necessary because they effectively discard light — which could otherwise be used to enable a shorter shutter speed (to freeze action), a smaller aperture (for depth of field) or a lower ISO setting (to reduce image noise). Additionally, some ND filters can add a very slight color cast to the image.

Understanding how much light a given ND filter blocks can sometimes be difficult since manufacturers list this in many different forms:

Amount of Light Reduction		Hoya, B+W and Cokin	Lee, Tiffen	Leica
f-stops	Fraction	Hoya, B+W and Cokin	Lee, Tiffen	Leica
1	1/2	ND2, ND2X	0.3 ND	1X
2	1/4	ND4, ND4X	0.6 ND	4X
3	1/8	ND8, ND8X	0.9 ND	8X
4	1/16	ND16, ND16X	1.2 ND	16X
5	1/32	ND32, ND32X	1.5 ND	32X
6	1/64	ND64, ND64X	1.8 ND	64X

Generally no more than a few f-stops is need for most waterfall scenarios, so most photographers just keep one or two different ND filter amounts on hand. Extreme light reduction can enable very long exposures even during broad daylight.

GRADUATED NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTERS

Graduated neutral density (GND) filters restrict the amount of light across an image in a smooth geometric pattern. These are sometimes also called "split filters." Scenes which are ideally suited for GND filters are those with simple lighting geometries, such as the linear blend from dark to light encountered commonly in landscape photography (below).


GND Filter	Final Result

Prior to digital cameras, GND filters were absolutely essential for capturing dramatically-lit landscapes. With digital cameras one can instead often take two separate exposures and blend these using a linear gradient in photoshop. On the other hand, this technique is not possible for fast moving subject matter or changing light (unless it is a single exposure developed twice from theRAW file format, but this increases image noise). Many also prefer using a GND to see how the final image will look immediately through the viewfinder or rear LCD.

GND filters come in many varieties. The first important setting is how quickly the filter blends from light to dark, which is usually termed "soft edge" or "hard edge" for gradual and more abrupt blends, respectively. These are chosen based on how quickly the light changes across the scene, where a sharp division between dark land and bright sky would necessitate a harder edge GND filter, for example. Alternatively, the blend can instead be radial to either add or remove light fall-off at the lens's edges (vignetting).

Soft Edge GND

Hard Edge GND

Radial Blend

note: in the above diagrams white = clear, which passes 100% of the light

Placing the blend should be performed very carefully and usually requires a tripod. The soft edge is generally more flexible and forgiving of misplacement. On the other hand, a soft edge may produce excessive darkening or brightening near where the blend occurs if the scene's light transitions faster than the filter. One should also be aware that vertical objects extending across the blend may appear unrealistically dark

Choose:	Final Photo	Location of GND Blend

Note how the rock columns become nearly black at their top compared to below the blend;
this effect is often unavoidable when using GND filters.

A problem with the soft and hard edge terminology is that it is not standardized from one brand to another. One company's "soft edge" can sometimes be nearly as abrupt a blend as another company's so called "hard edge". It is therefore best to take these on a case by case basis and actually look at the filter itself to judge the blend type. Most manufacturers will show an example of the blend on their own websites.

The second important setting is the differential between how much light is let in at one side of the blend versus the other (the top versus bottom in the examples directly above). This differential is expressed using the same terminology as used for ND filters in the previous section. A "0.6 ND grad" therefore refers to a graduated neutral density filter which lets in 2 f-stops less light (1/4th) at one side of the blend versus the other. Similarly, a 0.9 ND grad lets in 3 f-stops less light (1/8th) at one side. Most landscape photos need no more than a 1-3 f-stop blend.

HAZE & UV FILTERS

Nowadays UV filters are primarily used to protect the front element of a camera lens since they are clear and do not noticably affect the image. With film cameras, UV filters reduce haze and improve contrast by minimizing the amount of ultraviolet (UV) light that reaches the film. The problem with UV light is that it is not visible to the human eye, but is often uniformly distributed on a hazy day; UV therefore adversely affects the camera's exposure by reducing contrast. Fortunately, digital camera sensors are nowhere near as sensitive to UV light as film, therefore UV filtration is no longer necessary.

77 mm UV filter

However, UV filters have the potential to decrease image quality by increasing lens flare, adding a slight color tint or reducing contrast. Multicoated UV filters can dramatically reduce the chance of flare, and keeping your filter very clean minimizes any reduction in image quality (although even invisible micro abrasions will affect sharpness/contrast). High quality UV filters will not introduce any visible color cast.

For digital cameras, it is often debated whether the advantage of a UV filter (protection) outweighs the potential reduction in image quality. For very expensive SLR lenses, the increased protection is often the determining factor, since it is much easier to replace a filter than to replace or repair a lens. However, for less expensive SLR lenses or compact digital cameras protection is much less of a factor — the choice therefore becomes more a matter of personal preference.

Another consideration is that UV filters may increase the resale value of the lens by keeping the front lens element in mint condition. In that sense, a UV filter could also even be deemed to increase image quality (relative to an unfiltered lens) since it can be routinely replaced whenever it is perceived to adversely affect the image.

COOL & WARM FILTERS

Cooling or warming filters change the white balance of light reaching the camera's sensor. This can be used to either correct an unrealistic color cast, or to instead add one, such as adding warmth to a cloudy day to make it appear more like during sunset.

Above image's orange color cast is from the monochromatic sodium streetlamps;
with this type of light source virtually no amount of white balance correction can restor full color.
A cooling filter or special streetlight filter could be used to restore color based on other light sources.

These filters have become much less important with digital cameras since most automatically adjust for white balance, and this can be adjusted afterwards when taking photos with the RAW file format. On the other hand, some situations may still necessitate color filters, such as situations with unusual lighting (above example) or underwater photography. This is because there may be such an overwhelming amount of monochromatic light that no amount of white balance can restore full color—or at least not without introducing huge amounts of image noise in some color channels.

PROBLEMS WITH LENS FILTERS

visible filter vignetting

Filters should only be used when necessary because they can also adversely affect the image. Since they effectively introduce an additional piece of glass between your camera's sensor and the subject, they have the potential to reduce image quality. This usually comes in the form of either a slight color tint, a reduction in local or overall image contrast, or ghosting and increased lens flare caused by light inadvertently reflecting off the inside of the filter.

Filters may also introduce physical vignetting (light fall-off or blackening at the edges of the image) if their opaque edge gets in the way of light entering the lens (right example). This was created by stacking a polarizing filter on top of a UV filter while also using a wide angle lens — causing the edges of the outermost filter to get in the way of the image. Stacking filters therefore has the potential to make all of the above problems much worse.

NOTES ON CHOOSING A FILTER SIZE FOR A CAMERA LENS

Lens filters generally come in two varieties: screw-on and front filters. Front filters are more flexible because they can be used on virtually any lens diameter, however these may also be more cumbersome to use since they may need to be held in front of the lens. On the other hand, filter holder kits are available that can improve this process. Screw-on filters can provide an air-tight seal when needed for protection, and cannot accidentally move relative to the lens during composure. The main disadvantage is that a given screw-on filter will only work with a specific lens size.

The size of a screw-on filter is expressed in terms of its diameter, which corresponds to the diameter usually listed on the top or front of your camera lens. This diameter is listed in millimeters and usually ranges from about 46 to 82 mm for digital SLR cameras. Step-up or step-down adapters can enable a given filter size to be used on a lens with a smaller or larger diameter, respectively. However, step-down filter adapters may introduce substantial vignetting (since the filter may block light at the edges of the lens), whereas step-up adapters mean that your filter is much larger (and potentially more cumbersome) than is required.

The height of the filter edges may also be important. Ultra-thin and other special filters are designed so that they can be used on wide angle lenses without vignetting. On the other hand, these may also be much more expensive and often do not have threads on the outside to accept another filter (or sometimes even the lens cap).

For a more in-depth discussion of specific filters, also see these tutorials:

Understanding & Using Polarizing Filters
How to use Graduated Neutral Density Filters
How to use Neutral Density Filters

After my research on filters I decided that I would like to experiment with Polarising filters in my images as I want the clouds to pop out dramatically and the sky to have some tone too it, as in the past my skys have been flat and dull so I invested in a CPL Polariser 55mm screw fit for my 18-55mm Nikon D3000 kit lens.

Michael Kenna:

Michael Kenna comes from the North West and works internationally as a places photographer.

Born 1953 in Widnes, Lancashire, England
Currently lives in Seattle, Washington, USA

1973-76, London College of Printing, London, England.
1972-73, Banbury School of Art, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England
1964-72, St Joseph's College, Upholland, Lancashire, England

Awards

One Person Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Published Works

Works in Selected Collections

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow, Russia, 2008

This images was taken on a very wide angle lens giving a huge dramatic sky and a distorted look to the landscape. Kenna photographs monuments and places of importance around the world in deep and dramatic high contrats, black and white scapes.

What makes Kenna’s images work?

•Elegant

•Considered

•Calm

•Light

•Weather

•Feature

New Topographics

•This was a group of photographers looking at the US in a new way.

•Images are factual and confident

•Ironic and analytical rather than romantic and pictorial

•Concerned with mans effect on place

•Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, The Bechers

These Images are powerful in showing the degeneration of the US and how man have affected the natural landscape of Northern America. They appear to be shot using a telephoto lens as you can see the flattened effect caused by the telephoto lens. I feel that using a more low key black and white tone could have added more mood to the images rather than a bright look considering the idea they are trying to convey.

Light Metering

In its most basic form, regulating light into a camera was done when loading film into a

camera. (Sunny 16 rule)

Correct exposure requires measuring the light level at a set level (film speed, brightness or ISO)

•Aperture

•Shutter

•

Both of the above are set to allow the optimum amount of light into the camera.

For example: f16 @ 1/125 second

•f16 @ 1/125 second

•

Will allow the same amount of light into the camera as:

•f8 @ 1/500 second

•f11 @ 1/250 second

•f22 @ 1/60 second

•f32 @ 1/30 second

Lightmeters – This is a classic Weston Master, first introduced in 1939. The white object is the invercone

Light meter brands

•Weston

•Sekonic

•Gossen

•Polaris

•Leningrad

•The first step to metering light is to create a benchmark by entering or setting the ISO

•Decide which method of light reading you want to use

•

•Press to take reading

•

•Shift aperture and shutter speed scales to read

A reflected reading measures the light given off by a subject i.e. point the meter at the subject with no invercone

Good for:

•Black and White or colour on overcast days

•Average tone subjects

•Landscape (point away from sky)

An Incident reading measures the light falling on a subject i.e. point the meter from the subject toward the camera with an invercone

Good for:

•Transparency film use for accurate readings

•High contrast subject and conditions

•Portraits

Grey card reflected readings

•Use an 18% grey or mid-tone grey card

•Place this in the subject area with light reflected from it (not in shadow)

•Using no invercone or better still the spot meter in your camera or a spot meter attachment to take a reading

•

This is good for high accuracy readings when you are using medium or large format film where accuracy is important to form a correct negative or transparency

Sekonic 308

Metering Flash

There are two methods:

•Open flash with no cable. The symbol is the flash sign. Take an incident reading after switching meter to ‘read’, then trigger the flash unit.

•

•Cable flash. The symbol for this is flash sign + C. Connect the flash unit by cable to the meter, take an incident reading.

Here is an interesting article I found on lightmetering whilst looking into it:

CAMERA METERING & EXPOSURE

Knowing how your digital camera meters light is critical for achieving consistent and accurate exposures. Metering is the brains behind how your camera determines the shutter speed and aperture, based on lighting conditions and ISO speed. Metering options often include partial, evaluative zone or matrix, center-weighted and spot metering. Each of these have subject lighting conditions for which they excel — and for which they fail. Understanding these can improve one's photographic intuition for how a camera measures light.

BACKGROUND: INCIDENT vs. REFLECTED LIGHT

All in-camera light meters have a fundamental flaw: they can only measure reflected light. This means the best they can do is guess how much light is actually hitting the subject.

metering diagram: incident vs. reflected light meters

If all objects reflected the same percentage of incident light, this would work just fine, however real-world subjects vary greatly in their reflectance. For this reason, in-camera metering is standardized based on the luminance of light which would be reflected from an object appearing as middle gray. If the camera is aimed directly at any object lighter or darker than middle gray, the camera's light meter will incorrectly calculate under or over-exposure, respectively. A hand-held light meter would calculate the same exposure for any object under the same incident lighting.

18% Gray Tone

18% Red Tone

18% Green Tone

18% Blue Tone

Above patches depict approximations of 18% luminance. This will appear most accurate when using a PC display which closely mimics the sRGB color space, and have calibrated your monitor accordingly. Monitors emit as opposed to reflect light, so this is also a fundamental limitation.

What constitutes middle gray? In the printing industry it is standardized as the ink density which reflects 18% of incident light, however cameras seldom adhere to this. This topic deserves a discussion of its own, but for the purposes of this tutorial simply know that each camera has a default somewhere in the middle gray tones (~10-18% reflectance). Metering off of a subject which reflects more or less light than this may cause your camera's metering algorithm to go awry — either through under or over-exposure, respectively.

An in-camera light meter can work surprisingly well if object reflectance is sufficiently diverse throughout the photo. In other words, if there is an even spread varying from dark to light objects, then the average reflectance will remain roughly middle gray. Unfortunately, some scenes may have a significant imbalance in subject reflectivity, such as a photo of a white dove in the snow, or of a black dog sitting on a pile of charcoal. For such cases the camera may try to create an image with a histogram whose primary peak is in the midtones, even though it should have instead produced this peak in the highlights or shadows (see high and low-key histograms).

METERING OPTIONS

In order to accurately expose a greater range of subject lighting and reflectance combinations, most cameras feature several metering options. Each option works by assigning a weighting to different light regions; those with a higher weighting are considered more reliable, and thus contribute more to the final exposure calculation.

Center-Weighted

Partial Metering

Spot Metering

Partial and spot areas are roughly 13.5% and 3.8% of the picture area, respectively,
which correspond to settings on the Canon EOS 1D Mark II.

The whitest regions are those which contribute most towards the exposure calculation, whereas black areas are ignored. Each of the above metering diagrams may also be located off-center, depending on the metering options and autofocus point used.

More sophisticated algorithms may go beyond just a regional map and include: evaluative, zone and matrix metering. These are usually the default when your camera is set to auto exposure. Each generally works by dividing the image up into numerous sub-sections, where each section is then considered in terms of its relative location, light intensity or color. The location of the autofocus point and orientation of the camera (portrait vs. landscape) may also contribute to the calculation.

WHEN TO USE PARTIAL & SPOT METERING

Partial and spot metering give the photographer far more control over the exposure than any of the other settings, but this also means that these is more difficult to use — at least initially. They are useful when there is a relatively small object within your scene which you either need to be perfectly exposed, or know that it will provide the closest match to middle gray.

One of the most common applications of partial metering is a portrait of someone who is backlit. Metering off of their face can help avoid making the subject look like an under-exposed silhouette against the bright background. On the other hand, care should be taken as the shade of a person's skin may lead to inaccurate exposure if it is far from neutral gray reflectance — but probably not as inaccurate as what would have been caused by the backlighting.

Spot metering is used less often because its metering area is very small and thus quite specific. This can be an advantage when you are unsure of your subject's reflectance and have a specially designed gray card (or other small object) to meter off of.

Spot and partial metering are also quite useful for performing creative exposures, and when the ambient lighting is unusual. In the examples to the left and right below, one could meter off of the diffusely lit foreground tiles, or off of the directly lit stone below the sky opening:

NOTES ON CENTER-WEIGHTED METERING

At one time center-weighted metering was a very common default setting in cameras because it coped well with a bright sky above a darker landscape. Nowadays, it has more or less been surpassed in flexibility by evaluative and matrix, and in specificity by partial and spot metering. On the other hand, the results produced by center-weighted metering are very predictable, whereas matrix and evaluative metering modes have complicated algorithms which are harder to predict. For this reason some prefer to use it as the default metering mode.

EXPOSURE COMPENSATION

Any of the above metering modes can use a feature called exposure compensation (EC). The metering calculation still works as normal, except the final settings are then compensated by the EC value. This allows for manual corrections if you observe a metering mode to be consistently under or over-exposing. Most cameras allow up to 2 stops of exposure compensation; each stop of exposure compensation provides either a doubling or halving of light compared to what the metering mode would have done otherwise. A setting of zero means no compensation will be applied (default).

Exposure compensation is ideal for correcting in-camera metering errors caused by the subject's reflectivity. No matter what metering mode is used, an in-camera light meter will always mistakenly under-expose a subject such as a white dove in a snowstorm (see incident vs. reflected light). Photographs in the snow will always require around +1 exposure compensation, whereas a low-key image may require negative compensation.

When shooting in RAW mode under tricky lighting, sometimes it is useful to set a slight negative exposure compensation (0.3-0.5). This decreases the chance of clipped highlights, yet still allows one to increase the exposure afterwards. Alternatively, a positive exposure compensation can be used to improve the signal to noise ratio in situations where the highlights are far from clipping.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-metering.htm

Weather:

Looking into weather before a shoot is important as it can help you predict the out come of your photos and tell you which equiptment you need to take with you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2299812/UK-Weather-Forecast-Big-freeze-end-April-jet-stream-dips-Africa.html

For this assignment we are given four sub headings to experiment and explore.

1. A place that is familiar to you

''fa·mil·iar

/fəˈmilyər/

Adjective

Well known from long or close association: "a familiar voice".

Noun

A demon supposedly attending a witch, often said to assume the form of an animal.

Synonyms

adjective.

intimate - acquainted - conversant - close

noun.

intimate''

Looking into places that are familiar to me I have chosen to document a walk along the canal using photography as the canal is a familiar place to me spending every summer there as a child and older as my mother lives by the canals.

2. A city or Urban Sprawl

''An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns orconurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.

Urban areas are created and further developed by the process of urbanization. Measuring the extent of an urban area helps in analyzing population density andurban sprawl, and in determining urban and rural populations.

Unlike an urban area, a metropolitan area includes not only the urban area, but also satellite cities plus intervening rural land that is socio-economically connected to the urban core city, typically by employment ties through commuting, with the urban core city being the primary labor market.

In the US, Metropolitan areas tend to be defined using counties or county sized political units as building blocks of much larger, albeit more condensed population units. Counties tend to be stable political boundaries; economists prefer to work with economic and social statistics based on metropolitan areas. Urbanized areas are a more relevant statistic for determining per capita land usage and densities.''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area

For my urban area exploration I have explored around Blackburn and Morecambe looking at pattern and shape of the architecture. I used my Nikon D3000 on a over cast day using my in camera light meter.

Here are my shots.

For this image I have my camera on Its widest focal length to catch the most of the environment into my image I like the way that It has distorted the buildings a little and I think the angle of view point works well.

For this image I really considered my composition and wanted the Ball to play a big part in the image as well as the architecture and building structures.

This image is through a car window on the Prom in Morecambe, Lancashire. I used a polarising filter and this reduced some glare from the glass I wanted to catch the urban scape behind it with a nice bokeh effect so focused on the raindrops.

3.Wilderness or countryside

"Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial infrastructure."^[1] Wilderness areas can be found in preserves, estates, farms, conservation preserves, ranches, National Forests, National Parks and even in urban areas along rivers, gulches or otherwise undeveloped areas. These areas are considered important for the survival of certain species, biodiversity, ecological studies, conservation, solitude, and recreation. Wilderness is deeply valued for cultural, spiritual, moral, and aesthetic reasons. Some nature writers believe wilderness areas are vital for the human spirit and creativity.^[2] They may also preserve historicgenetic traits and provide habitat for wild flora and fauna that may be difficult to recreate in zoos, arboretums or laboratories."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilderness

For my wilderness shots we took a trip to the lake district on Tuesday the 14th of April, the weather was sunny and a bit cold as we were just in spring but the light was nice and golden and I caught some nice images over the hills. This was my first time experimenting with polarising filters on landscapes.