Not Choppy Waters

In one big experiment today I used a 10-stop filter, a polariser and a graduated filter. It seemed a worthwhile endeavour because the wind was up and the water choppy. In fact the wind and waves were coming towards me.

I don't normally use filters because I usually bracket the shots when it's so bright, but with the holder on the camera for the 10-stop, I thought, why not. The first thing that struck me was to avoid the foreground reeds because they would be all blurry. I did try one shot including reeds and quite liked it, but this image had better sky. The polariser had no effect of course shooting into the sun and I'm not sure I had the graduated filter correctly positioned. The dark clouds look too dark.


Next I followed Nigel Danson's YouTube video to treat the sun. The idea being to smooth out the bright circle and give a more pleasant glow in the sky. I repeated it on the water.

I'm not thrilled about the composition, too much empty space in the foreground, but certainly a challenge.