The Digital Photography Book

Using a Graduated Neutral Density Filter

If the polarizing filter is the most important filter for landscape photographers, then a graduated neutral density filter has to be the second most important. This filter is designed to help you do something your camera can’t usually do on its own, and that is expose for the foreground without overexposing the sky. That’s why this filter has become so popular—it darkens the sky, but it’s how it does it that really creates a pleasing effect. This filter is graduated, so it’s darkest at the top of the sky, and then it graduates down to full transparency (like a gradient), so the ground doesn’t get darkened ...