Vari-N-Duo and 3-stop ND Grad capture the total magic of Death Valley before the storm

Although Brian Rueb got hooked on photography while in college, he says, "Once I was married and my kids started arriving, my photo bug all but vanished. Then came the digital SLR... and while the initial investment was big, there was no more buying $7 rolls of film or paying $8 processing fees to look at a bunch of images I didn't like. I got hooked again.

"In the past three years, I have been shooting more and more regularly. I still find, however, that photographing new places is a special challenge. I roll into a location hoping all the research done before departure will pay off and I'll be in the right places at the right times. Even when I am, the weather also has to cooperate. In the case of a recent last-minute trip to Death Valley National Park with fellow photographer Stephen Oachs, we had done the research, seen the storms in the forecast, and decided to roll the dice.

"With our crock pot cooking a pork roast in the car, we drove the 10 hours from San Jose to Death Valley National Park. On the way we discussed priorities for shooting locations and came up with our list: Mesquite Dunes, Badwater Basin, Devil’s Cornfield, the Racetrack and Zabriskie Point.

"Weather is such a key component to any good landscape shot. I'm almost always toying with a storm -- hoping to get to our location right before the storm, or right after. Of course I also hope, if we end up in the middle, that the storm won't be too lengthy. In this case, there was heavy rain in the forecast for Death Valley, so we knew the storm was a doozy.

"It was 82 degrees, sunny, and warm when we reached the valley floor…we could see the storm lingering on the horizon….waiting to descend. A brief stop to set up camp in Furnace Creek and we were off to shoot.

"Our first evening’s shoot was in the Badwater Basin (photo above), and by the time sunset was drawing near the storm had dropped into the valley. Our light and composition possibilities were fading quickly. Badwater Basin is a perfect spot to use Singh-Ray filters. The ground is very light, and with the dark storm approaching, I needed to balance out the scene. A Singh-Ray 3-stop soft-step Graduated ND filter worked perfectly. I combined it with the Singh Ray Vari-N-Duo filter so I could use its built-in LB Warming Polarizer to really warm up the ground and create some separation between the storm and sunset. If I had wanted to streak the sky, and create that sense of movement, the Vari-n-Duo’s ND filter would’ve allowed me a wide range of exposure options as well. I hand hold all my ND Grad filters and move them on longer exposures to help eliminate any shadowing the filter might cause. I’ve used a lot of other filters in my time and the Singh-Ray filters give me the truest and most accurate color and the highest level of control over my subject. This allows me to present an image almost exactly as it appeared when I was there. With the successful Badwater Basin shoot to brag about, we made an evening out of eating the pork roast.

"Our plans for the next morning would depend on the weather. If we woke to a windless, star-speckled sky we would head to the Mesquite Dunes, but if it was windy, we would head to Zabriskie Point to avoid geting caught in a sand storm out on the dunes. Sand storms are very tough on equipment.

"The morning was beautiful and perfectly calm. We drove to the dunes and hiked out to a more remote section to await the sunrise. Every so often the universe lines up perfectly for an amazing photo opportunity. This was just such a case. This is also when having the security of Singh-Ray filters pays off. Using the Vari-N-Duo and 3-stop soft-step ND Grad combination, I was able to dial in just the perfect amount of polarization to bring out the warmth of the sunlit dunes and not lose any of the amazing storm clouds that were starting to fill the valley. Without using filters, capturing a scene like this, with such harsh light would be nearly impossible. And because of the storm there were no other photographers in the dunes. It was pristine and amazing.

"With the morning shoot at Mesquite Dunes completed, we spent the rest of the day scouting locations and figuring out where to set up for our evening shoot. Death Valley truly is a landscape photographer's paradise. It’s quite overwhelming. The options are limitless as to where you can shoot and when the weather is as dramatic as it was during our visit, it’s simply stunning.

"For the evening shoot, we decided on the Devil’s Golf Course, a fiendish maze of salt crystals and mineral deposits that winds its way throughout the Death Valley floor. While we’d been fortunate to dodge the storm for the majority of the past two days, our luck was beginning to run out and the storm was really moving in. We were dodging rain drops as we set up our equipment. I chose a section of the valley where the clouds were breaking apart, and dramatic light was filtering through, illuminating the peaks in the background. I used the same combination of filters that I used for the other shots. I find that the polarizer in the Vari-N-Duo really helps the color and separation in cloud structures -- especially in such stormy conditions. The filter really helped those clouds above the peaks to stand out. The filter also gave the scene that other-worldly 'Lord of the Rings' feel, which was exactly how it felt to me standing there photographing it.

"When I first got into landscape photography, scenes like this would’ve overwhelmed me. I would’ve inevitably botched the entire shoot, coming home with only partially correct exposures. Using Singh-Ray filters has allowed me to capture the scenes I see as perfectly as I could have ever hoped. I have the type of color and exposure control in the field that would’ve taken me hours in Photoshop to duplicate. Now when I leave a shoot, I’m excited to go home and see the images on the big screen -- without dreading all the post-processing I would have to do.

"That shoot at the Devil’s Golf Course turned out to be the last one of the trip because the storm came in hard and heavy that night -- chasing us out at first light and ultimately washing out nearly every road in the valley. But for our day and a half it was total magic."

You can find more examples of Brian's photography on his website and his Flickr portfolio.