Polarizing the clouds

1 Look at the sun

When outside, polarizers work best when shooting perpendicular to the direction of the sun. Try this: give the sun a thumbs up (place your thumb over the sun) now rotate your hand. The plane in which your hand rotates is where the polarizer will be most effective.

3 Fix it on

A kit might allow you to slide filters into a holder on the front of your lens, but here we have a circular, screw-fit filter that screws into the filter thread on your lens. Some lenses have bulbous front elements, which mean a special adapter and extra large filters need to be used.

5 Cloudspotting

There are 10 species of clouds on earth (yes, species!) and they constantly evolve. Stormy days will provide tall, billowing cumulus congestus and nimbus clouds filled with detail. Or for more brush-stroked styles look towards mountain tops for lenticular formations.

2 Have a look

Polarizing filters work without a camera, so before you screw it on your Nikon, hold it in front of your scene and rotate it. Notice how it effects the sky. You don’t have to be exactly 90 degrees perpendicular to the sun for it to work, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt!

4 Avoid the dark band

If you’re shooting a wide expanse of sky, be careful not to shoot at an angle where you’re left with dark banding in specific areas. It’ll leave the sky looking uneven. At this point it’s either better to take off the filter or reposition yourself to remove it (closer to 90 degrees to the sun).

6 Expose the scene

You want detail in the cloud but you also need it to look bright. On the day we had patchy cloud with bright skies, so in manual mode we opted for an aperture of f/5, a shutter speed of 1/640 sec which meant we could shoot handheld at ISO100.