sophiawestern | (no subject)

i love how you can see how clear the water is in the second one. where did you take these?

The first two are at Cedar Beach on the Long Island Sound. One side of the beach is sandy and the other side is very rocky.

The last one was taken in South Haven Park, also on Long Island.

I like the rocks in the second picture. :) Beautiful.

Wow, the clarity of the pebbles in combination with the light in that second one is just incredible. How did you do that, technically?

I used 9 stops worth of neutral density film with a 30 second exposure at f/16.

Ah, I've never worked with neutral density film. That's beautiful. (Man, you're making me wish I still had a film camera to play around with.)

It's not film, like photographic film - it's film, as in a type of filter paper that you put across the lens that blocks light. it comes in big sheets that you can cut down to size. There are filters with slots so that you can slide it in, or you can do what I did which is to cut it to the size of the UV filter and sandwich it between the uv and the the actual glass of the lens. (I am going to get a proper filter to hold it for future uses.)

Oh yeah! I've seen the gradient filters that you can use to filter the light of the sky but let in the light from the ground. Similar concept, right? I want to experiment with filters, soon. I keep seeing amazing stuff like this and wanting to try it myself.

You're probably thinking of a graduated ND filter. This is a similar concept, but it would be hard to simulate the gradual change in the graduate ND filters with the filter paper. The closest you could probably get is to cut one paper in half so that the bottom of top of your lens has more light block than the bottom But that would lead to a pretty abrupt shift. But the ND film is pretty cheap and fun to play with regardless! :)