Lee filters and example images.

Hi Steemians.

First of all, thanks for the warm welcome!
Ok, so I'm on the difficult second post, the first one being a simple "Hello world".
Thats easy, but where to go from there?
There are tons of ways to move on from "hello" in a conversation face to face. But in an online community there is no reading of eyes, body language or anything to connect or relate to. And with only one post the metrics is sparse.
I guess I have to start on a topic thats been on my mind lately and go from there...

Lee filters - how and why?
I've been using Lee filters for a while now. It's a bit of glass that you slid into a special filter holder that goes in front of your camera lens. There are four types of filters.
1: Graduated filters (Half of a rectangular filter is 100% transparent and the other half is darker)
2: Polarizer (Prevents light scattering \ reflections )
3: Neutral density filters (A rectangular filter that only passes thru a fraction of the light)
4: Colored filters. (Add different tones to your image or enhance contrast in black and white work)

They have completely changed the way I think when I'm creating a landscape image or a sea scape for that matter. The process of using filters add a few steps and will slow down the phase quite dramatically, but I recon that's a good thing actually. If an exposure takes 8 minutes to compete and the sunset is 20 minutes away you don't mess around! It makes you a bit more focused. Miss it and you will maybe not get another chance that evening.
Their ability to balance out the difference in luminosity from an intense sky to against the (usually) darker ground is nothing short of addicting and makes post processing easier.

Lee filters biggest hit a few years ago was one they called the "Big Stopper".

Here is my favorite setup with a big stopper and a graduated filter.

With this setup I've made the images below:


(This image above is a combination of two images, one 6 second exposure to get details in the water and an 8 minute exposure to get the movement in the cloud layer.)

Above: 22 m\s wind and 3 meter high waves in combination with a slow shutter speed can make the shoreline to disappear almost completely.

Hope you enjoyed this little post, feel free to ask if you have any questions on this topic. I'm no expert but maybe we can figure it out together. Oh, and btw, I'm not payed in any way by Lee or affiliated with them, this is only a fan based post.

Thanks for reading and take care.
Best regards, Erlend Grøseth