Photography News Issue 37

Photography News | Issue 37 | absolutephoto.com

Technique

Interview Moor control Mike French creates dramatic landscapes around Dartmoor and the Devon coast. We asked him about his use of filters to control the light...

How did you come to use filters in your landscape work? When I was younger I used my dad’s old Fujica 35mm SLR, and, of course, with film cameras you don’t have the luxury of creatingHDR images or exposure blending. Using that camera and its filters was an important way of learning how to control light, but for a short time later, when I was learning Photoshop with my university work, I would only ever blend images to achieve the dynamic range I wanted. Soon though, I started to resent that method as it always felt a bit like cheating. What’s more, I work as a graphic designer, so I spend a lot of time in front of a computer and I felt I would rather spend time shooting than in front of a computer. One evening I stumbled across my dad’s old Cokin A-series filters and bought a 52mm adapter to fit on my 18-55mm. All of a sudden I realised I could create equally dramatic images, in the camera. Personally, I feel as though using filters creates a much more honest and real-life looking image. Which Cokin filters do you use? I now shoot landscapes with Fujifilm cameras and a Samyang 12mm f/2 with a 67mm thread, so I use P Series filters. My go-to Cokin kit is a couple of P154 ND8X three-stop Neutral Density filters, a P197 Graduated orange filter, a P121M two-stop Graduated filter and a P121S three-stop Graduated filter that I often stack with a P154. This obviously helps to reduce light transmission but saturates sunsets nicely. Now that Cokin has released the Nuance filter set, I will be looking to renew my ten- stop filters, too. What would you miss most about using filters if you couldn’t use them? Being so close to the coast and Dartmoor, which holds a lot of water, I couldn’t imagine trying to continue photography without ND8X filters to slow water movement down. In certain scenarios I use ten-stop filters as well, but often the really blurred movement can cross the boundary into hyper-reality for me. Photographing water at around 1/10sec can blur it sufficiently whilst still keeping the natural look. Of course, none of this can be achieved effectively in post-processing. What’s your approach to using ND grads; how do you assess where the grad should be placed and what strength to use? I’ve been doing it a while, so there’s nothing too mathematical about it for me now. I decide on the level of detail I want in the foreground and consider the exposure needed to balance out that with the sky and take it from there. I try to balance the graduation above the horizon to keep a degree of realism, as a line of dark shadows just in front of the background with a correctly exposed foreground always looks a bit fake. Obviously, if there are dark

shadows in the foreground as well then it can help to balance out a lower graduation line.

When using full NDs, howmuch calculation do you do in terms of shutter speeds? Again I try not to be too mathematical as this can remove some of the creativity for me, I know my ND8X will drop my shutter speed three stops, so if an unfiltered view meters at f/8 and 1/30sec then with that filter I can drop it around 1/4sec. What I would say, however, is I always pay special attention to the histogram as that will showme howmuch detail is in the shadows. A histogram is the truest test. Do you avoid certain subjects or compositions when using filters, such as shooting into the sun to avoid flare? Why avoid flare? Flare can be our friend as long as it is used carefully. After years of lugging around heavy DSLRs, in 2014 I made the jump to Fujifilm mirrorless cameras. With this, I started to appreciate the nuances in things like flare. If I’m shooting down by rough seas and my filters get salty, then flare can quickly become uncontrollable, but in the main, I find pushing the envelope of what’s considered good practice is where unusual and interesting images are born. Right The tumbling Venford Brook, Dartmoor, is calmed with a 136sec exposure at f/7.1 and ISO 320. Below The Daymark Tower, Kingswear at 50secs, f/5.6 ISO 320. Thanks to... You can see more of Mike’s work at forasimaging.com