Experimenting with ND Filters for a B&W City Skyline

The last couple of days have seen some terrible weather, with howling winds, lashing rain and record low temperatures for this time of the year. When I woke up the wind had died down and the rain had stopped. It was still cold and the overcast, but as a landscape photographer I was going to let that stop me from going out and taking photos.

It was early so I headed off in the city of Perth and see if I could find a cityscape that could look interesting in these conditions. With a thick blanket of cloud still handing around, the light was dull making all the colours unsaturated. These are usually great conditions for Black and White images.

I found myself a location on the foreshore of the Swan River in South Perth, looking out across to the City skyline of Perth. This was a great opportunity the experiment with some of the Neutral Density filters I had, specifically the Lee Little Stopper (6 stop) and Lee Big Stopper (10 stop).

So I take a series of shots of the same composition to demonstrate the effect these ND filters have on the sky and the water. I also double the filter up to have a total of 16 stops see the results.

Finally, I walk-though how I edited one of the images to demonstrate how I deal with colours cast and enhance the image to create a moody black and white city skyline.

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