Only mad dogs and creative photographers with polarizers go out in the mid-day sun

For the past 17 years, Jay Goodrich has worked at expanding his vision to see exciting photos wherever he goes. Whether he is walking out of his front door or traveling to places as exotic as the Altiplano of Chile and Bolivia, his mission is to find something different, new, and exciting.

On a recent trip to Yellowstone National Park, Jay was focusing on just that very ideal and made a very important discovery. "The weird thing about my discovery is that I didn’t do anything new--for the most part. I have known for probably a decade now that a polarizer is key to removing reflections and sheen from the surfaces of water, leaves, rocks, and other light reflecting objects. When I use a polarizer to reduce reflections, the increased color saturation looks absolutely amazing and the images just sing. What I had never tried until this trip, however, is using that same polarizer during the middle of a bright, sunny day under the harshest light conditions -- the kind of light that all photographers hate.

Lately, I am very excited about creating abstract images. So when I stumbled upon the Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone at high noon, with very few clouds in sight, I gave my Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer a try. What ensued was a photo session that lasted for 2 hours. This polarizing technique works really well when you position yourself at the typical 90-degree angle to the sun where the reflection-blocking effect is at its greatest. If you falter to one side or the other the image suffers greatly. The beauty of digital photography is that you will see the results immediately and be able to correct for it.

My subjects were the almost fluorescent colors of the mineral oxides and micro-organisms that live in the boiling-hot geyser waters. Their colors are directly related to the temperature of the out-flowing water. Yellows are found in the hottest outflows, reds/browns in the medium temperatures, and greens reside in the coolest. These varying colors blend in abstract textures and patterns and for me it was heaven. My LB Warming Polarizer did way more than I ever expected, it cut out all of the reflections and also warmed the color a bit, which was especially important because the light at noon tends to cast a very blue color. This combination allowed my idea and in turn my photographs to be a success.

"The key to shooting here at mid-day when there are no clouds in the sky, is that there are also very few shadows. Once you eliminate those reflections from the surface of the water, the colors below jump right off of the page. (Click the image below to see a before-and-after comparison.) I now have a great selection of abstract images in my collection, all taken at a time of day when most nature photographers (myself previously included) are taking naps."



Jay Goodrich is a professional photographer and writer based out of the state of Washington. He is a contributor to the new Outdoor Photographer Magazine Blog and has an image he created in Yellowstone last summer in the finals of the 2010 BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. For more information and to see more of his images visit his website, his blog, and his stock photo site.