Sundance Resort – Polarizing Filter

This last weekend was a hectic and busy weekend.  It was both successful, and slightly disappointing all in one.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, I shot the Mammut Bouldering Championships in Salt Lake City.  What I didn’t mention is that Sarah and I were spending the weekend in Sundance for a relaxing weekend.  As you can imagine, the climbing comp sort of interrupted our weekend.  It was still a great weekend, and Sundance is a beautiful resort.  Before going up, I had this grand idea of taking beautiful landscape shots and amazing sunrises.  I had been reading a lot about polarizing filters, and even decided to pick one up to make my landscapes that much more beautiful.  Well, I’m pretty sure we missed the wildflowers (at least at the lower elevations), and we never really got up to the beautiful landscapes.  I also didn’t really prepare ahead of time with learning about the polarizer, as well as where I wanted to shoot from.  We hiked up to Stewart Falls, and I was imagining this beautiful sunrise, but it just didn’t work out to well.

I not only used the polarizer, but I used 2 ND4 neutral graduated density filters.  I think this image has potential, but with the low amount of water flowing this late in the summer, and how small the waterfall is, it just looks like a wet spot on the rock.  In addition, since the sun was at my back, I didn’t get much affect from the polarizer. 

Feeling defeated, and honestly not so professional, I headed back to the resort and searched out a few waterfalls I had seen the day before.  I had been told that polarizers help eliminate reflections, and I was looking forward to trying this out in slow shutter speed water shots.  I was very happy with the effect.  I’m sorry for not posting any non polarizer shots, but basically all the parts of the water that are dark in these shots would have reflections and be pretty white.

Enjoy.

~ by cruxphoto on August 16, 2007.