- The Golden Rule of Landscape Photography
- Become Married to Your Tripod
- Shoot in Aperture Priority Mode
- Composing Great Landscapes
- The Trick to Shooting Waterfalls
- A Tip for Shooting Forests
- Where to Put the Horizon Line
- Getting More Interesting Mountain Shots
- The Trick for Warmer Sunrises and Sunsets
- Turn on "The Blinkies" to Keep More Detail
- How to Deal with the Dreaded Blinkies
- How to Show Size
- Don't Set Up Your Tripod. Not Yet
- The Trick to Getting Richer Colors
- What to Shoot in Bad Weather
- Atmosphere Is Your Friend
- Getting Rid of Lens Flare—The Manual Way
- The Landscape Photographer’s Secret Weapon
- Keeping Your Horizons Straight
- Shooting on Cloudy Days
- Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 1
- Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 2
- Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 3
- Faking Panoramas
- Why You Need a Wide-Angle Lens
- Want to Take Things Up a Notch? Shoot Low
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
The Trick to Getting Richer Colors
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One tool the pros use to get richer, more vivid colors is the polarizing filter. Of all the add-ons used by landscape pros, the polarizing filter is probably the most essential. This filter screws onto the end of your lens and it basically does two things: (1) it cuts the reflections in your photo big time (especially in water, on rocks, or on any reflective surface), and (2) it can often add more rich blues into your skies by darkening them and generally giving you more saturated colors throughout (and who doesn’t want that?). Two tips: (1) polarizers have the most effect when you’re shooting at a 90° angle from the sun, so if the sun is in front of you or behind you, they don’t work all that well, and (2) you’ll use the rotating ring on the filter to vary the amount (and angle) of polarization (it’s also helpful so you can choose to remove reflections from either your sky or the ground). Once you see for yourself the difference a polarizing filter makes, you’ll say something along the lines of, “Ahhhh, so that’s how they do it.”