More often than not, you read about using polarizers to darken the blue sky and make white clouds stand out in a dramatic fashion. Many times too much. But another great feature of the polarizer is cutting down reflections. Under the right angle, you can see through reflective window panes, through water, and many other surfaces. This may also help saturate colors of otherwise reflective surfaces. Instead of glare, you can capture the true color of the surface.

Polarizer Is Not Just for Blue Skies!

As you can see in this picture on the left, taken with a lens without a polarizing filter, the grass in the bottom picked up strong reflections from sun and is throwing the glare at the camera. Sometimes, this may simply result in weaker color in that particular photo section. Other times, it may result in an overall contrast reduction due to glare if the reflections are really strong. 

Now compare to this image on the right. The reflections are gone and the color is back. If this happens to you in a colorful fall foliage scene you can imagine how you could go from low contrast colorless landscape full of glare to a beautifully colorful scene.

Now how about this all green scene? You pick which one you like better.The point here is that not always do you want to remove reflections. For example when photographing animals swimming on a lake, you may actually want to keep the reflections there to separate them from the water that might otherwise swallow them. To the last point you can actually try to use the polarizer again, but for the opposite effect. Rotate it until you see the strongest reflection. If you have the time and a patient subject, try taking several pictures with different rotation of the polarizer and review them later on a larger screen.

Have Fun!

Lacking Perspective When there is nothing in a photo to give sense of scale, it is interesting to hear people guess what is in front of them. Many times, macro shots can be mistaken for landscapes, or vice versa. Sometimes, the difference is not that drastic but still, a few-foot mound can be taken as a mountain, or the other way around. I enjoy being challenged like that by the photos of others. Yet, it is difficult for me to guess which of my photos fall into the category and which ones are actually really easy to recognize without the additional clues suggesting scale.

So as you look at this, what lies in front of you? ... Is this an aerial photo of a gigantic volcano eruption (think 100s to 1000s of feet)? Is this a small spewing thermal spring (think 10s of feet)? Is it a blowhole on an ocean coast (under 10 feet)? Or is it a blowhole on a lake shore? Or is it something else, possibly way smaller?

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Spoiler Alert!

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This is a Lake Erie Blowhole. It is still in action with the lake having all open water. On windy days, like the one depicted here, the waves push into the ice and snow formations on the shore and shoot out through the volcano further building it up when it is freezing or reducing it when it is warm. The dirty water comes from a lot of sand being mixed in. While not apparent here, the beach is actually free of snow for the most part and the blowing wind filled the air with sand like it was a sandstorm in a desert. I did not last long seeing my camera accumulate water and sand.

In my Buffalo & Western New York Gallery, you can see how these volcanoes look once the lake freezes over and they become dormant.

Have fun!
 

Change of Pace I like spending time in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization, or at least as far as I can get, and photograph natural landscapes. I like to chase light, be it a sunrise, sunset, or a breaking cloud allowing the sun to briefly peek through. Once in a while, I like to change things around though, get out of my comfort zone, and head in the opposite direction towards the city. And even within the city, in my case most often Buffalo, NY, there are places that most would call beautiful - great architecture, lights, street scenes, and more. Or, you can head in the direction most don't, or at least not with a camera.

Changing the pace, getting out of the comfort zone, serves as a great opportunity not only to capture different subjects but also to do it differently.

For landscapes, I usually like saturated colors. When I shoot portraiture, I usually back off on saturation or even go for black and white. Instead of small apertures, I reach for shallow depth of field in portraits.

For landscapes, I don't try much HDR and prefer either waiting for the right light or the good old and tried split neutral density filters. However, as here, industrial photos is an area where I like the feel HDR gives them!

And in many cases, skills and experience acquired in one area actually lead to great opportunities in another.

This photo shows the Ohio Street Bridge in Buffalo, NY.

Have Fun!