Enhance reflections

Use a circular polarising filter for the lessknown application of creating strong reflected images in landscape scenes.

Polarising filters are often seen as a staple item in the landscape photographer’s kitbag. They are essential tools for boosting colour saturation in an image, increasing contrast and reducing reflections – one of the most well-employed applications for these items.

A polariser works by differentially permitting light into the lens, dependent on its orientation. Reflected light is highly polarised, so by aligning the mesh of the filter to the angle of those rays (reflected off a lake surface, for example) more reflected light is filtered compared to the light coming from the surroundings.

However, a less commonly known application of a polariser is to increase the brightness of reflections. By rotating the filter to align the structure with non-polarised light in a scene, the native lightreducing properties of the filter appear to apply more to the surroundings than to the source of the reflection.

While a filter will never ‘increase’ light transmittance, the relative difference in filtration effect, for example between the lake and the surrounding land, is reduced – the reflected images therefore seem closer in brightness to the real-world scene elements.

While this may seem a complex scenario, in practice a photographer can enhance reflections by learning how their filter behaves in different settings. Here we’ll walk through the process that’s involved.

After BRIGHTER BALANCE By correctly employing a polarising filter, the differential brightness between real‑world and reflected images is less pronounced, increasing reflection visibility and creating greater landscape depth. Before