What to do when you forget camera gear in the car?

Posted on | August 28, 2011 | 15 Comments

Desert Garden Sunset at The Huntington Botanical Gardens

You lend yourself a hand.

I noticed this spot during the last sunset I photographed at the Huntington Botanical Gardens so I made a mental note to photograph this scene at a future summer evening event. I obviously made it there to shoot this photo last night but what isn’t obvious is that I had forgotten my Singh-Ray Graduated Neutral Density filters in the car and since I don’t do HDR processing, I made up for the lack of GND filters by covering the lens with my hand over the sky portion for about half of the three second exposure. This was necessary in order to balance out the exposure between the sky and landscape otherwise my sky would have been a blown out white had I exposed for the foreground.

See more of my Huntington Gardens pictures.

Comments

15 Responses to “What to do when you forget camera gear in the car?”

Mark
August 28th, 2011 @ 7:20 am

Creative solution Richard, I don’t think I would have thought of that. Of course, it helps to have a long exposure or very quick hands!
Julie Rorden
August 28th, 2011 @ 8:17 am

Clever idea, Richard!
Richard Wong
August 28th, 2011 @ 11:13 am

Thanks guys. You’re right, Mark. I did the same thing at another scene when the sun was still up so I had a polarizer on which gave me a longer exposure to work with. Much easier to count in seconds than in fractions of a second.
Tim Parkin
August 28th, 2011 @ 11:45 am

I believe that David Muench and Jack Dykinga used this technique for most of their early work. Nice to see it used again
Richard Wong
August 28th, 2011 @ 11:46 am

That’s interesting to know, Tim. I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll have to look that one up.
Today’s Shared Links for August 28, 2011 @ Chuqui 3.0
August 28th, 2011 @ 10:21 pm

[...] What to do when you forget camera gear in the car? [...]
Russ Bishop
August 29th, 2011 @ 12:05 pm

Gotta hand it to you Richard – that’s a great idea
Richard Wong
August 29th, 2011 @ 1:22 pm

That’s funny Russ. Thanks.
Younes Bounhar
August 30th, 2011 @ 1:11 pm

Would never have thought of that…awesome…I am really surprised (shocked?) by the result.
Richard Wong
August 30th, 2011 @ 1:57 pm

Thanks Younes. It definitely requires a lot of trial and error.
David Leland Hyde
August 31st, 2011 @ 1:03 am

Seems pretty simple, but I get the sense it might take some doing to get it right as you say. Interesting idea though. You have managed to share something many photographers will find to be new information.
Richard Wong
August 31st, 2011 @ 3:48 pm

Thanks David. Not sure how many photographers would resort to this since digital manipulation is so popular these days to a point where a lot of people who used to shoot single frame images with GND’s (as I do) just do HDR blending now from multiple images.
pj
September 1st, 2011 @ 7:12 pm

Pretty cool Richard. I’ve used my hands to dodge and burn many times in the darkroom, but never would’ve thought to do it in camera…
Stephen
September 1st, 2011 @ 8:46 pm

Great idea. I’m definitely going to try this out. Normally I would just combine two images, but this would be simpler.
Richard Wong
September 2nd, 2011 @ 12:11 am

Thanks guys. I’d be curious to see how it turns out for you.