Shoot and Edit: Winter

About an hour ago I fired up Feedly and one of the first sites that popped up was Faith’s Simplicity with an update on a new blog hop with Ashley Sisk called Shoot and Edit.

It’s SO much more than just a blog hop though!

On Monday, Jill of Forever ‘n Ever Photography posts an SOOC (straight out of camera) challenge, link-up and a photographic tutorial. This week’s challenge is Winter. Jill’s tutorial includes several tips on metering correctly as well as instructional videos to help with wintery shots!

On Thursday, Ashley of Ramblings and Photos posts an editing tutorial and link-up! I’m excited to see what this week’s tutorial will be.

What a wonderful gift Jill and Ashley are offering!

I was so excited about this new project that I immediately went outside with my tripod in search for something I could pass off as “Winter”. While it snowed here yesterday, nothing stuck to the ground so I don’t have any pretty snow or frost to photograph.

I decided to break out my neutral density filter to see if I could capture movement from the wind in what was left of the leaves in a nearby tree. It worked, kind of. The impact of the movement isn’t very noticeable and just kind of makes the leaves look blurry, but the techniques I was trying to apply actually worked. I just need to find a better subject. Below’s my SOOC. Check back Thursday for the edit!

As I mentioned in Friday Finds, I recently read about a landscape photographer using a neutral density filter to choose a slower shutter speed and capture motion. There are different types of ND filters depending on the optical density. Mine is 0.6 or ND4 which means it lets 25% of the light through. Here’s a side by side of the photo above with the neutral density filter and one taken without the neutral density filter. All the other camera settings remained the same.

As you can see, the image on the right is way overexposed.

This wasn’t the most successfully executed photography session, but I had fun practicing this technique and learning more about how my ND filter works. Prior to last week, I had no idea what it did!

Don’t forget to come back on Thursday to see how Ashley’s tips help me edit this shot!