LAND OF THE RISING SUN

Do look directly into the sun! Adam Waring shows you how to use a reverse ND grad filter to balance a bright horizon

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CRASH COURSE

ESSENTIAL PHOTO SKILLS MADE EASY

1 HOUR When you’re photographing landscapes, the sky will usually be much brighter than the landscape below. In this situation, it’s common practice to make use of a graduated ND filter: dark at the top and transitioning to clear at the bottom, these are used to balance the exposure levels in the scene so that both the land and sky are properly exposed.

But when you’re shooting at sunrise or sunset with the sun appearing in the shot, the brightest part of the scene is actually the horizon, with the sky above it markedly darker, so when faced with this situation, a different type of ND grad is called for.

For the above shot we used a NiSi Reverse GND8 (0.9) Filter. This specialist 3-stop reverse ND grad is clear at the bottom, in the same way that a regular graduated filter is. However, the transition to dark in the middle of the filter is much more abrupt, and this then gently fades towards the top of the filter.