Balancing sky and foreground is easy with a few Graduated ND filters and Live View

For Floris van Breugel, nature and wildlife photography provides the perfect balance to his "day job" as a graduate student at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "My research interests involve insect-inspired flight control, so -- as you might guess -- my photography always strives to bring out nature's true character. Each image represents what I saw in the original scene. Post production is limited to adjusting the relative brightness, contrast, and color balance in the image.

"Unlike many veteran nature photographers, I began my career just a few years ago using digital cameras from the start. With film, the need for Graduated Neutral Density filters has long been recognized -– without the use of such filters, film is simply not able to capture the full tonal range of a gorgeous sunset over a dark foreground. Now, with digital photography, it's possible to take multiple exposures of the sunset and then blend them together in the computer to achieve a similarly extended tonal range. This prompts many digital photographers to ask, 'Why invest in Graduated ND filters when I can just do it in post processing?' One answer is that in many cases I can’t use multiple exposures when there's any movement in the scene. For me, the strongest reason I don't bracket multiple exposures in the field, is that it will require so much more time and head scratching later when I'm trying to get the exposure balance to look right on my computer monitor. That’s valuable time I can better spend out shooting more images! As a busy graduate student, I really appreciate the time I save by using Graduated ND filters to get my landscape exposures balanced as closely as possible in the field.

"On a recent trip to Anza-Borrego State Park in Southern California, I had the opportunity to photograph several scenes that simply would not have been possible without my Singh-Ray ND grads. Due to the LA traffic, I was a little late getting to the scene and didn’t have much time to scout. I knew of one area, however, with easy access that would give me plenty of opportunities. As soon as I pulled the car over and ran out into the cactus-covered hills, I spotted a group of cholla cacti, positioned perfectly to take advantage of the colorful clouds. I promptly started photographing them. I didn’t think twice, I just set up my tripod and camera, turned the camera to 'live view' mode, and grabbed my Singh-Ray 2-stop hard-step Graduated ND filter.

"Speaking of live view, Ron Niebrugge recently posted an excellent story on this blog explaining the great value of this new feature when working with Graduated ND filters. I agree with Ron and thought I would share a few thoughts on the matter as well. Not only does live view help me get the position of the filter right, but because I hand-hold my filters there’s even more benefit to using live view. By standing back from the camera, I see the image displayed on the camera's monitor. Then when I hand-hold my ND grad in front of the lens, I see where my hand and the filter are, as well as the angle of the filter so that I can easily fine tune its placement. Before live view I often resorted to using a filter holder because I had lost too many images due to glare or intruding fingers from improperly held filters. Now live view lets me see where I’m holding the filter and makes it much easier to keep it in the right place while shooting. Since getting my camera with live view, I haven’t used my filter holder at all. Another valuable result of using live view and the graduated filters together is being able to see how my composition is going to look. With multi-exposure blending it’s much more difficult to predict the overall look of the final image.

"After the clouds dissipated over my Teddy Bear Chollas, I moved further west and stumbled upon this blooming Hedgehog Cactus posed before a rarely seen clear view of the desert and a perfectly positioned dancing Ocotillo (usually these cacti are hidden behind bushes or rocks). I set up my tripod low to the ground, about 12 inches away from the cactus, and waited for the clouds to cooperate. Right when they drifted into the frame, I again used my 2-stop hard-step Graduated ND filter and took this shot. Again, live view made positioning my filter a lot easier than trying to lie down on the ground to see through the viewfinder.

"The following day the clouds had dissipated, so this time I turned my attention to this backlit chollas at sunset -– that’s when they really come alive. When shooting straight into the sun, there’s of course a lot of dynamic range to deal with. Here, a 2-stop Graduated ND filter wasn’t going to cut it, so I took out my 3-stop Reverse Graduated ND filter. I generally find any more than 3-stops of Graduated ND is simply too much -– the foreground will end up looking too bright for the rest of the scene to get a natural looking effect. In fact, even with 3-stops it’s difficult to get it looking right. In this case, however, it worked from an artistic standpoint. I wanted the two primary focal points to be the sun and the cholla, and I wanted the dark sky to help bring attention to these elements. By using this filter, stopping my 16-35mm Mark II down to f/22, and carefully choosing my exposure, I was able to balance everything in a single exposure. The reason I mention the lens is because the beautiful sunstar flare is a direct consequence of using this lens, I never got anything that pretty out of my 17-40mm. Had I decided to bracket multiple exposures, I would have faced a nightmare of washed out hills and overwhelming flare. With such a wide dynamic range, the bright portions of the image tend to bleed out into the darker areas, making blending a real nightmare. Also, at this time of day, the sun moves surprisingly fast, so motion is again an important factor. By completing the work in the field, I knew I had successfully captured the image I wanted, rather than hoping it would work out later."

You'll want to see more of Floris' fine art images, visit his website and his blog Art in Nature. "Be sure to check back often," says Floris, "I go on frequent trips to various California destinations, preferring those areas less often photographed."