Wild Art: Photos around town and blue pencil erasers

by Laura Seewoester

This week our Flickr community has shared pictures from around the metroplex. Try to guess where some of the shots are located before you read the caption.

Tips and Tricks

This week: filters. How, when and why to use them. Filters are a cheap and easy way to experiment with photography or just generally enhance your images, and there are about a million different types to choose from. You can get filters to soften an image, add contrast, color, and do just about anything imaginable, although most of the effects nowadays can be achieved with Photoshop. Here are some of the more popular filters and their uses:

• UV Haze: The UV haze filter will clear up an image and make it crisper on a hazy day. They also don't have a filter factor (meaning they don't soak up any extra light), so they are often used to protect the lens. (In other words, if a rock flies at your lens, it cracks the filter instead of the lens and it is much cheaper to replace.) If you do not have one of these babies on your lens, get one. You can also use a skylight filter for lens protection. A skylight filter will also provide a little warmer tone to an image with a lot of blue sky in it.
• Polarizer: A polarizer acts much like sunglasses for your lens by eliminating unwanted glares and reflections. It also helps make your blue skies (or waters) bluer. A circular polarizer lets you adjust the extent of glare blockage you want and usually produces a better overall effect. If you have never played around with filters before, this is the place to start and should be the second one you buy (next to your UV Haze). You will not be disappointed.
• Neutral Density: A neutral density filter helps you manage how much light reaches your sensor (or film). It basically blocks light, allowing slower shutter speeds on bright days if you're looking to blur a waterfall or if you want to decrease your depth of field so more of the subjects in your image will remain in focus. They come in ranges with different filter factors, some blocking about one stop of light up to about 20 stops. The nicer video cameras will come equipped with ND filters to help control lighting because their lenses are all fixed.
• Close up Filters: If you want to do some macro work but don't want to fork out the money for a new lens, you can buy close up filters. You screw the filters onto your lens and they work like a magnifying glass. They often come in three packs, and the closer you want to get to your subject the more you screw on. The only drawback is sometimes the filters allow you to focus closer than you can physically get to your subject since they add a little length to your set up, which is annoying when you don't want a picture of flower petals squished up against the lens (but said squished petals will be in focus).
• Other fun filters: There are quite a lot of color filters you can buy, but most color correction and purposeful color muddling is so easy in Photoshop it's not worth the hassle or money. Softening filters are another one that's just too easy in post production to bother with. One fun one is the starlight filter, which gives lights a starburst effect. This is a good one to play around with if you like to shoot shows or when shooting any kind of street lamp, etc.

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