W
HEN YOU LIVE in a country like the
UK with its cool and often wet
climate, it likely that half of your
shooting days will feature moody skies and/
or rain. So, if every miserable-looking day
was a photography write-off, we’d probably
find we rarely went out shooting. But rather
than pack away your kit and take shelter
indoors, it’s worth getting out in all but the
most torrential downpours, because moody
days can often produce stunning results.
Not to mention, when you get a break in the
light, especially around golden hour but
even throughout the day, the results can be
absolutely sublime. The fine line between
stormy weather and great light is a
landscape photographer’s dream.
For capturing moody skies, the most
important piece of kit you can have is a set of
Neutral Density graduated filters (ND grads).
These filters have a neutral light-reducing
coating that graduates from a full effect
measured in one to four stops at the top to
no effect at its centre. The graduation can be
hard, medium, soft or even reversed, with
each type designed for use with different
horizons and reverse grads most often used
for capturing sunrise and sunset.
The result of using ND grads is that they
reduce the amount of light entering the lens
in the sky area, so this part of the frame
underexposes to maintain detail while the
ground area is left unaffected. The most
common grads come in the 100mm slot-intype, where you use a filter holder attached
to the lens, which allows you to position the
filter horizontally in the holder with the
ability to rotate it, too.
Some photographers prefer to use HDR
(High Dynamic Range) photography to
capture detail in both the sky and the
foreground, and the technique works
exceptionally well in moody conditions.
HDR requires that at least three exposures
are taken of the same subject – one that’s
correctly exposed, one that’s two stops
underexposed and a third that’s two stops
overexposed. These are then merged
together in post-processing. But here, we’re
going to show you how to maintain moody
detail in a single image using filters.