Taking Night Photos with A Neutral Density Filter at the Polynesian

A photographer whose work I admire, Peter Sanner, spent some time with me a few weeks ago and answered my endless questions about how he achieves such vibrant colors in his night landscape photography.  (You can check out his Facebook Page for more great Photos}

I love how he captures so much light and such beautiful colors in his night photography.  So I drilled him on how he accomplishes this.  I have a desire to get the same “feel” in my night photos at the parks, so I was extremely excited he was willing to share with me his tips and tricks.

I went into my conversation with him with a false premise though.  I automatically assumed his photos were Photoshopped, and that he was using certain filters.  So of course I started off my questions based on that.  Boy was I wrong!  He immediately corrected me, in a nice way, and let me know that he only uses Photoshop for portrait retouching, which I TOTALLY understand.  What he told me next, on how he achieves these vibrant photos blew me away!

He said on top of using long exposures {sometimes up to 30 minutes!}, he uses Neutral Density Filters.  Again, I am a novice, and just learning still, so I asked him what Neutral Density Filters were.  Basically they are like Sunglasses for your lenses.  There are different shades and many varieties to choose from.

While still talking, I started searching Amazon for ND Filters, and found this set, which I sent to Peter for his opinion on.  He said they were a fine set to start with, so I purchased them ($14.99 shipped with Prime).

Well they arrived earlier this week and I started playing with them.   I wanted to get a feel for them in daylight and at night.  So my first test was done at Cocoa Beach on a cloudless, bright afternoon.

I love the deep colors the ND8 filter gave the entire image, and especially love how Courtney doesn’t look as washed out.  I also noticed how her bathing suit seems to be brighter, which is weird to me, as the filter is quit dark.

Now it was time to test the filters with some long exposures at night.  While these pictures didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked them to, I did get to see the potential of what I can do with these filters in future pictures.  You see, the biggest issue I had was getting my ISO right and camera shake.  Even though I was using my tripod, I was still getting camera shake from pressing down the shutter control.  So, I went home and ordered this wired shutter control remote.  The Canon T3 can’t use wireless… My new remote is supposed to be here Tuesday, and I will definitely be heading out to get some night shots as soon as it does!

These shots were taken at the Polynesian Resort, with ISO settings of 3200 and 6400 (the over exposed one).  I kept my aperature at f16 and shutter speeds of 15 or 30.

As you can tell that new remote is GREATLY needed!  But can you believe these were shot at 8:00pm?  Using Manual mode with an ISO of 3200 and a shutter speed of 15 really brightens things, but adding in the Neutral Density filters really does bring out the hidden colors.  I am completely hooked and can’t wait for my remote to get here!

Here are a few more shots from the other night at the Polynesian, none that I am real proud of, but definitely learned  a lot and I am really looking forward to shooting more night shots now!