Epic Fail

[Kayaker72]

My trip to Palouse Falls came about unexpectedly when I was visiting family back in Idaho. Basically, a couple of them knew I wanted to do the trip at some point and they brought it up as an option to do on the Monday before I flew out. Just as I wasn't expecting to shoot eagles so I had left my 100-400L back in New Hampshire, I hadn't planned on shooting landscapes so I also had not packed my graduated neutral density filters.

So, I decided to improvise and try a hand held version of the "black card technique." But I didn't have a black card. So I grab the cardboard envelop a couple of photos had come out of, held it up against the light and it seemed to do a good enough job blocking out the light. It had a nice clean edge, so I figured that would work.

And in some instances it did. Very well actually. Here is a shot I already posted. You can see the line right near the horizon.


small-0784 by kayaker72, on Flickr

But a few others, where I tried to block out more light....epic fail. I probably ruined 3/4 of my shots with light bleeding through the cardboard when I missed the horizon. In the field, I figured if I missed the horizon a little, I could compensate in post. But not with the light bleed. Here is an extreme example:

Who knew cardboard was so transparent? BTW, after I noticed this on my viewfinder, I held the cardboard up to the sun and sure enough, I could see a little light coming through.

It won't be the last time I screw up a shot...but I just finished processing all my photos and had to laugh a little at how many I deleted because of this....

[Kayaker72]

I've seen the black card method referred too a couple of times while reading different things. So it is still out there. I also tried post processing a single image and HDR of a couple of the shots. Probably because it was the first time that I had tried it, the majority of my shots used the black card technique. But I definitely got some keepers from the trip.