Using ND (Neutral Density) Filters to Create Beautiful Midday Captured Landscape Photography

As some of you know I recently drove from Windsor, Ontario to Alaska to photograph Grizzly Bears. This trip took me through some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.  I had my full arsenal of cameras, lenses, and tripods for this trip so I was able to take a lot of photos along the way, but not as many as you may be thinking.  Let me explain why.

When it comes to landscape photography, there’s really only an hour or two of good photo light and this comes at sunrise and sunset.  And this really only applies if the weather allows for this good light. I was driving anywhere from 10-18 hours a day.  That means for 8-16 hours a day, I was driving during poor photo light.  I drove through so many amazingly beautiful areas and didn’t even take out my camera because in the end, the photo would look blah.  It would still be a photo of a beautiful place, but when it comes to selling photos, mine have to be better than the competition and shooting landscapes at midday is no way of accomplishing that.

That being said, there are still ways to capture landscape images successfully in the middle of the day.  There’s black and white, HDR (high dynamic range), and using filters.  For the flowing water photo I created entitled “Toad River” I chose the filter option.

With the lighting being so uneven, I decided to use a 2-stop split neutral density filter.  This allowed me to slow down my shutter speed enough to sort of give the water a flowing look as well as correctly expose the sky and foreground. 

If you’re unfamiliar with split ND filters, I’ll try to explain how they work.  Basically, they are a square/rectangular piece of glass.  One half is shaded and it gradually fades to clear about midway down the filter.  This way you can choose the exact point of the photo to darken.  For further examples of ND filters, a google search will reveal all your hearts desire.

Instead of shooting this the way I originally did, I could have re-composed it showing almost all water and no sky and fully covering my lens with the ND filter to darken the entire image by 2-stops rather than just half of it.  I feel, however, that the clouds add a sense of drama to the photo.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below this blog or email me directly at brandon@omniscapephotography.com.

Thanks for reading!
Brandon Broderick

Using HDR to Create "Cypress Falls Pano" - by Brandon Broderick

HDR was one of the first techniques I learned when I got into photography about 3 years ago. If you’re not familiar with HDR, I’ll do my best to sum it up. HDR or High Dynamic Range basically involves shooting the exact same scene at different exposures. Those exposures are then stacked on top of each other using HDR software. Once stacked, the images are tone mapped and voila, your HDR photo.

When tone mapping, you can adjust the strength of the HDR “effect”. I normally have it set quite low. High enough to show correctly exposed highlights and shadows in the same image, but not too high that it looks like a photo from another planet. Keep in mind almost every HDR I shoot is of natural areas so having the strength set too high isn’t necessary to produce the image I want. I don’t want it to sound like I’m against shooting HDR images with the strength set high, it’s just not my style.

Now that we’ve got a basic grasp of HDR, lets talk about panoramic photography. I think over the years panos have become one of my favourite types of photos to shoot. I find it’s a great way to give the viewer of the photo a pretty realistic idea of exactly where the photo was taken, sort of an “it feels like I’m there” feeling.

For those of you not familiar with panoramic photos, here’s a quick rundown. A panoramic photo is a number of photos that are shot in sequence of the same scene and stitched together to create one single photo. This can be done horizontally, vertically, tiled, or 360 degrees.  A tripod is a must for panoramic photos, and preferably one with a level on it. My tripod for panos has a level on the tripod, on the tripod head, and I also have a bubble level that fits in my camera’s hot shoe to make sure I’m shooting perfectly level. I also make sure to overlap each photo by one third for seamless stitching. I’ve mentioned stitching a few times and I should clarify that I’m not manually lining these photos up. There are programs out there that do this for you and make shooting panos actually quite quick and easy.  Shown below is the leftmost component of the Cypress Falls Panorama.

Ok now comes the fun part. I figure I shoot a lot of HDR’s and a lot of panos, so why not combine them and shoot an HDR pano?  But not just any HDR pano. A 45 photo HDR pano. That’s right, 45 photos were used to create this one shot.  Normally when I shoot HDR’s I use 3 shots. One that’s 2 stops over exposed, one was 2 stops under exposed, and the third one is the correct exposure. This time I decided to change things up a bit.

For this pano I stitched 5 photos side by side. Each of those 5 photos is an HDR photo consisting of 9 exposures. The exposure values are: +0.5ev, +1.0ev, +1.5ev, +2.0ev, 0, -0.5ev, -1.0ev, -1.5ev, -2.0ev. I even have a hard time figuring out all those numbers I just listed so I’ll try and explain exactly what those mean. The + or - in front of each number indicates over exposed (+) or under exposed (-). And the number indicates how many stops the photo was over or under exposed. The 0 in between the over and under exposed values indicates the image that was shot at the correct exposure. All of those exposures were then combined into a single HDR photo and the 5 HDR photos were stitched together side by side to create the panoramic photo “Cypress Falls”.

If you have any questions or comments about this latest blog entry, feel free to email me at brandon@omniscapephotography.com or reply to this thread and I’ll do my best to answer you.

Thanks for reading!

Brandon Broderick

The Making of "Lake Nipissing" - by Brandon Broderick

This landscape photo we previously named "Endless Blue" is a bit different than others I've taken. It's not that it's a different style, or a different technique. Actually in that sense, it's quite similar to the style of a lot of my photos. But the thing that separates this one from the others, is how I found myself with the opportunity to take the photo.

I like to think I'm a pretty positive guy, and being positive is exactly what I needed to do when my Jeep broke down 25 kilometers north of North Bay, Ontario a couple months ago. I've always had bad luck with vehicles so I'm used to breakdowns, however this one happened while I was 8 hours away from home with my 4 month old puppy.

I was on my way to photograph some loons in Kirkland Lake, Ontario so I had all my camera gear with me and decided that I'd use that to put a positive spin on my trip. I ended up being stuck there for 2 days waiting for the part (power steering pump) to arrive so I had some time to talk to the locals and find a place to take some photos.

I finally decided to shoot down at the waterfront of beautiful Lake Nipissing in North Bay. The sunset wasn't ideal for what I normally like to shoot. I prefer shooting really bright colorful sunsets but this one was kinda dull. I always shoot in RAW so I was able to adjust the temperature while editing and decided to give it a "cooler" feel.

The last blog was about using slow shutter speed to create star streaks and in this photo, I used the same technique, just not to that same extreme. For the star shots I was shooting at about a 10 minute exposure. This photo was shot with a 6 second exposure.

I also shot it with my widest lens (14mm) to really give a sense of the environment I was in. I even ended up shooting a panoramic version called "Lake Nipissing Pano" to further the wide angle idea.

Another technical thing I'll mention is that I shot using a tripod with my camera quite close to the water level. This allows me to have a steady shot at a lower, different perspective. I also used a remote to make sure there was absolutely no camera shake.

Here are a few tips for taking this type of landscape photography. Firstly, always keep a flashlight in your camera bag. To get the slow shutter speed I wanted, I had to wait for about 15-20 minutes after the sun had set. I learned that tip the hard way and have had to feel my way out of some sketchy hikes so it's something I can't stress enough.

Another tip is to use a bubble level to make sure your horizon is straight. I'd say crooked horizons are one of my biggest pet peeves. When you're shooting at eye level it's pretty easy to get the horizon straight in the first attempt, but when shooting so close to the ground, this isn't always easy. The bubble level combined with my cameras Live View function really helps with this. Some tripods have built in levels as well as some tripod heads but I prefer the kind of level that fits into the camera's hot shoe.

Well that about does it for the making of "Lake Nipissing" and if you have any questions don't hesitate to reply to this thread, or send me an email at brandon@omniscapephotography.com

The Making of "Northern Ontario Star Trail" - by Brandon Broderick

Greetings Omniscape Photography fans, and welcome to our first blog. For this blog, I’ll be discussing my landscape fine art photo entitled "Northern Ontario Star Trail".  This photo was taken in Northern Ontario near the town of Kirkland Lake. I had always been interested in photos of the stars, and more specifically, photos of star trails. After lots of trial and error, I was finally figuring it out and decided it was time to get a bit creative with it.

The night this photo was taken, there was a full moon so I had to take advantage of it. I’ve taken photos of the moon before but wanted to use it in a different way this time. I set up my shot so I had the moon at my back. This would allow me to still photograph the stars and allow the moon to illuminate the foreground. This is a single 15 minute exposure. The only editing done was a slight temperature adjustment and some minor noise reduction.

Lastly, here’s a simple tip for these night shots. Always try and set up your shot before it gets dark. It is still possible to set up the shot in the dark, however I find that composing a shot and making sure focus is correct is much easier to do during daylight hours.

Equipment used:
Camera: Canon EOS 5D mk II
Lens: Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM
Tripod: Gitzo GT2541 carbon fiber tripod
Tripod Head: Manfrotto 488RC2
 
That's all for now, I'll be back to you soon to talk about how I utilized High Dynamic Range (HDR) to create my landscape fine art photograph entitled "Whytecliff Park".  If you'd like to me discuss any of the  landscape, cityscape, or flowing water fine art photography from our online store, please post below or e-mail me at brandon@omniscapephotography.com