When I take photos, my goal is to capture what I’m envisioning as much as possible without having to rely on any post-processing. This approach is far from easy, as it demands a thoughtful slowdown and the ability to embrace and learn from my many (many) mistakes. I still question if I even know what I’m doing or not.
And recently, I’ve been making an effort to really force myself into full-manual photography. This isn’t just manual focusing but also (mostly) manual adjustments of white balance, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I’m also using a monochrome camera that only captures in black and white, challenging me to perceive the world in gradients of light and shadow rather than the distraction of colors.
I love black and white photography, and when using a regular camera, I often convert my photos to black-and-white as part of the process. Working in monochrome seems to let light, shadow, and texture have stronger voices, which is more in-tuned with the way I want to capture things.
I’ve been experimenting with different colored filters, particularly with orange and yellow, to help me develop discipline and hone my craft. My journey into using color filters is just beginning, and already, the experience has been both challenging and enlightening.
Here are some of the filters I’ll be playing with and what each one is supposed to help with:
Yellow Filter: Increases contrast by slightly darkening skies, making clouds stand out, and lightening greenery. It’s a subtle effect that enhances details and texture in landscapes, especially useful for gently separating elements in black and white photography.
Orange Filter: Offers a stronger contrast than the yellow filter, dramatically darkening blue skies against clouds and making the white branches of trees more pronounced. It also deepens shadows, providing a more dramatic effect that should be great for emphasizing texture and depth.
Green Filter: Enhances greens, making foliage appear brighter and more differentiated from other colors in black and white. This filter is less about sky contrast and more about bringing out details in green subjects, such as leaves and grass, making it ideal for nature photography, where you want to emphasize vegetation.
Red Filter: Creates a very strong contrast by significantly darkening blue skies to near black and making clouds pop, offering a striking and dramatic effect. It also enhances the contrast of foliage and can penetrate haze to a degree, making it powerful for landscape photography and dramatic skies.
If you’re curious about color filters and want to learn more, The Darkroom Photo Lab and Hoya Filters have great guides with visual examples.
Neutral Density (ND) Filters: Reduces the amount of light entering the lens, allowing for longer exposure times without overexposure. It’s ideal for creating motion blur effects in waterfalls or clouds, or for using wider apertures in bright conditions to achieve a shallow depth of field. ND filters do not affect colors or contrast. I’ve heard that the quality of variable ND filters aren’t as good as regular ND filters, but I’ll be trying both to see if I can tell a difference in quality or not.
There’s a great article at The School of Photography on ND filters.
It will take me some time to work through and gain experience and skill using these filters, and I’ll post my progress as I go. I’m really interested in seeing if I find a filter that speaks to me and my vision the most.
Below are the first pictures I’ve taken with an orange filter while at Kain Run Creek yesterday that I thought I would keep …
Great to see some new photography from you! I like that you always keep trying new things,in this case with filters and all manual. It’s nice to try to do all the settings. After all, that’s how it worked with the earlier cameras, and they came up with pretty good pictures too. Good luck with learning. I know it’ll be good.
Thanks, Chantal! I’m just grateful that I don’t have to use film or else I would have thrown away a lot of bad pictures! Maybe if I can get good enough I can have enough confidence in doing much of this same work using film 😉