It's a commonly argued topic, should you do everything in camera and produce the art there and then with little need for post-processing, or do you perfect the art after the shoot through in-field techniques and post-processing?

To start, I'd like to say that because I currently only own two filters (technically three, but I'll address this later) that doesn't mean I don't want more, these are simply the two 'types' which I feel are irreplaceable through post processing.  And that brings me to my main point - and also the short version of this blog post - if it can be done in post processing without sacrifices to image quality then I would chose not to spend the hundred(s) of pounds on each piece of glass.  One final comment is that this is specifically for photography, not video, use of filters in video is a very different topic!

Which filters do you own?
Well I'm glad you asked!  I have a circular polariser and a 6-stop ND filter and I'll begin by talking about the circular polariser.  It is a 'Cokin 77mm Slim Pure Harmonie Multi Coated Circular Polarizer' and although that quite a mouthful, basically it'll set you back about £100 RRP (can be found for less) and for the price has stunning results.  Cokin are a well established brand and produce quality products; they are not the best and do produce budget filters along with their top level filters which can damage a brand name, but from my dealings with their products, the expensive ones are of top quality!   The 6-stop ND filter is a 'Fomatt-Hitech 77mm Firecrest Neutral Density 1.8 filter' and this one will set you back £130 RRP but can once again be found for cheaper.  It is extremely well reviewed, available in all filter thread sizes and at a variety of densities.  

So, what does a circular polariser do?
A circular polariser can do a couple of things to an image, but primarily (for me at least) they are used to remove reflections.  If you currently own no filters and have money burning a hole in your pocket that you want to spend on something photographic then this is only type which is truly 'necessary', i.e. the effect cannot be replicated in Photoshop/Lightroom.  I have used an example below to illustrate the effect - on the right is the non-polarised image and on the left is the polarised one.  There's a pretty stark difference and you probably see now why this filter is irreplaceable by post-processing.  Sure, you could darken the water and colourise the stream to make it closer to the polarised version, but you'd never retrieve the data of the river bed.

There's another interesting point to cover when looking at the example images above.  A filter (unless graduated) makes a global adjustment, in other words it affects the whole image.  Therefore personally I wouldn't consider a polarised images 'complete'.  As you can see in the comparison the grasses above the stream have had the frosty shine removed from them, but I liked this part as it showed the 'wintery-ness' of the scene.  Therefore, I would take one polarised and another non-polarised and then blend them together in post processing, picking each part that I liked from each.

If you are interested in finding out about the physics behind polarisation, then there are plenty of resources on the internet, but there is not enough space for me to cover it here, plus it would be like the blind leading the blind if I were to attempt an explanation...

Okay, so if the polariser is the only 'necessary' filter, why own an ND filter as well?
Well, ND filters are extremely close to being irreplaceable and personally I would say that they are, however, there is a way to replicate the effect that an ND filter has on an image (covered further down).  An ND filter is used to lengthen the shutter speed.  It is a uniformly dark piece of glass which blocks a given amount of light from passing through, depending on the density that you choose.   A 10-stop is often the go-to ND filter as its affect is much larger than my own 6-stop is on a scene, but I prefer the flexibility of a 6-stop as if I need a little bit of a longer shutter speed then I can usually fiddle with camera settings to achieve it. 

If you are wondering about the '1.8' in the name of my filter, this applies to the optical density of the glass and you can go >here< for further understanding.

I mentioned that these filters are somewhat replaceable in Photoshop and I'll quickly explain how.  As a longer shutter speed records data over a longer period of time and so you see the smoothing of movement, in clouds for example, you can replicate this by shooting a timelapse and blending all the images together into one. There are times when this works perfectly but there are also times when it fails and this is why I would say that you still, with the current state of technology, need some form of ND filter.
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What filters do you think aren't needed?
ND graduated filters are what I feel are not needed in any way.  I am yet to come across a scene that I thought I could produce a stronger image by having an ND graduated filter.  If an ND filter blocks a set amount of light from an image, then an ND graduated filter blocks the stated amount at the very top of the filter and slowly fades this out as you reach the bottom of the glass, thus allowing you to balance skies and foreground in one image.  You can buy many variants of the graduation, some that have a hard edge in the centre or are inverted, thus starting at middle and fading out towards the edge of the glass.  However; you could also compose a scene, expose for the sky, take a picture, then expose for the foreground and take another which can then be blended in seconds in Photoshop or Lightroom.  So in essence both methods do the same jobs and I have no problem with anyone using either, however there is one way in which the post-processing method is far superior than in-camera method and that is truly custom blending/gradients.  

​To explain, take a look at this example....

​So what filters do you want?
There are some I haven't covered and one which I have yet to mention.  I do have one more filter, it's a variable ND filter and is used to affect shutter speeds whilst filming, if you're interested it is a cheap Zomei filter and I actually wouldn't recommend it!  I needed a filter quickly and didn't have much money to spare and so I got this ~£40 piece of glass, which makes the image slightly softer and has a slightly 'brown-ish' colour cast.  I didn't cover it fully as I just wanted to cover the filters I use for my photographic work in this article.

A category of filter which I missed was colour filters.  I am not a black and white photographer by any meaning of the words.  I have converted a couple of images to b+w and shot a couple for purposeful effect, however I much prefer colour images and, unless there is a purpose for it, feel that black and white takes out what I like most about nature - the vibrancy.  However, if you are a black and white shooter then colour filters have their purposes - in essence they change how colours are represented in grey.  I won't say much on this topic as I don't know enough, but this is great article if you want to look into it - www.photographymad.com

Of all the filters out there, the only one I'm still wanting is a 10-stop ND; the effect it has cannot be replicated by my 6-stop at times.

To conclude; polarising filters are irreplaceable, solid ND filters are extremely useful for interesting effect and ND graduated filters will help you balance the exposure between sky and foreground, but their effect is completely possible to replicate and is even surpassed in effectiveness by Photoshop/Lightroom.

Thanks for reading, hope you found it informative.  Please feel free to jump into the comments if you disagree with anything I've written, its always interesting to know other people's standpoints!

I once had the comment "oh, so you know how to use Photoshop", when another photographer was shown an image of mine.  This was a few years ago and I immediately thought that this wasn't what I wanted people to think.  In my mind a viewer should look at an image and be blown away by the scene, not question the reality.  This being said, in the current world of photography, so many images have elements changed and removed that anyone with editing know-how may question all the images that they see.  I recently watched a landscape image critique by FStoppers (follow this link --> YouTube), in which they will often make a comment along the lines of - "is this one real?".

So the point and the question that I'll be looking at in this post (and would love to hear your own opinions in the comment section) is - how much is too much and where would you personally draw the line in editing?

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Removing Objects and Distorting the Scene
My personal views, when it comes to landscape photography, is that you should make an image as beautiful as you can without changing the physical/constant landscape.  This obviously involves some grey area but I'll clarify what exactly I mean by this.  

A few examples of what I would remove/distort:

• Shooting panoramas you will often find more things going wrong in terms of matter that you didn't want to include but had to due to the extremely wide field-of-view.  For example when photographing at Ralph's cupboard recently, I was with two other photographers, who were standing on the same cliff edge as me.  This meant that in the final stitch, I had a camera bag on the floor to the left, a photographer on the right and my own tripod leg in the very central foreground.  All of these, I removed in post.  However, there were some cows, which due to the long exposure were blurred and I felt (even though they were very small in the frame) that they ruined the image, however I couldn't remove these as they were part of the constant landscape.  
• Accidentally leaving a flash in the foreground of a panorama I shot at Kynance Cove, was a rookie mistake and due to me rushing, I didn't notice until post.  However I was willing to remove this.
• The previous post I made on my blog was about stitching and blending my vertical panorama of Bassett's Cove.  In this I posted a video of the blend and you will quite easily notice that I had to distort the scene to match the two exposures.  Some may say that I have changed the scene and it wouldn't be identical to the real-life scene.  However I would say that this is perfectly acceptable; I haven't changed the scene i.e. made the cliff taller, introduced a new sky or something along those lines.  
• Finally, it can be hard to avoid flare in sunset/sunrise shoots and so you may need to copy and blend another piece of land over the top of the part with the flare.  For the purpose of removing flare, I would say that it is fine; if you were purely doing it because you didn't like how a flower was dying and would prefer to have a living one in the foreground, then I would say that this is too far.  

As you can probably tell from those few examples, if your final image comes out representing the natural landscape and how it presented itself on that day, then you can call it a landscape photograph.  However, if you didn't like the sky, but shot a really nice one the day before and so you combined the two images, I believe you now have to call it - and make it obvious that it is - a composite image and ensure that someone viewing it doesn't mistake it for a real scene.  

I mentioned the 'constant' landscape in the introduction to this section and what I mean by that term is, you can remove objects such as a flash which you forgot you left in the foreground, or a tripod leg which got in the way because of shooting such a wide-angle.  But you shouldn't remove anything which you haven't introduced to the scene.  An example of this - in my image of Bassett's Cove, there is a rusty, white fridge in the gulley down the right hand side of the image.  I wouldn't remove this as then I have changed how it would look to someone would see it through there own eyes if they were there (even though I doubt anyone would be that eagle eyed, or even care enough to spot the fridge and realise that it wasn't in my image!).


Colour and HDR
For photographers; colour, lighting, time of day etc, are often the most important factor for their images.  I would say by all means enhance colour until it looks like your screen is broken, I mean my images are probably brighter than most would make theirs.  Bright foregrounds and colourful skies are something I love, but they can be over done and I often find myself sliding the opacity of layers back a bit before saving the final image.  

When talking about oversaturating, I can't help but bring up HDR photography and how its purpose is to capture a greater dynamic range (it's in the name, High Dynamic Range), which will help obtain accurate highlights, shadows and midtones - not make your image look like the most detailed and colourful scene possible.  This is the reason I choose to create HDR images by blending with brushes and gradients and picking the parts I want to compliment the scene; instead of stacking the exposures and playing with the sliders.  A lot, if not the vast majority of photographers use the latter technique and produce images far better than my own, but I find that I can't use that technique to my own benefit and have become accustomed to my own style of edit, which I can only recreate using the way described before.

I draw the line of 'too far' at changing colours.  If you have a blue plant on green grass but would rather have a purple one and so you grab the colour picker and slide the hue from blue to purple, then I would say you have changed the scene too much to call it a true landscape.


Blending Different Moments of Time
An argument that those against a 'heavy edit' would say, is that copying a sky from a different shoot is just as bad as waiting for the sun to go down, photographing the sky and then stitching the two in post.  Personally I believe that this is fine.  On many occasions I photograph the foreground whilst the sun is still visible and then the sky gets much more colourful about 5 minutes after.  I have no problem with blending 'moments of time' in this way.  The justification for this comes in the form of how I remember the scene whilst I was shooting.  When we look back at memories, we tend to exaggerate what we liked and remove the bad aspects.  I wouldn't remember the foreground looking really warm and the sky looking okay - I would remember the sky at it's best moment and the same for the foreground.  So I guess, my landscape photography can be classed as more artistic than documentary.

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Wildlife
Changing subject matter from landscapes to wildlife and my views change slightly.  I would still never add anything to an image without having to then call it a composite, but I am more lenient toward removing unwanted matter.  I actually can't find an example on my website but I know for a fact that I have done it; imagine a very plain scene - green background, single stick as a perch and a robin-sized bird sat atop - but there is about an inch of stick coming in from the right (where the bird happens to be looking) and cropping it out would throw the balance of the image, well then I would remove the stick.  I don't make a habit of removing objects unless they are really distracting, because as I said before there are no example of this currently on my website.

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Where else does it matter?
I have just talked about landscape and wildlife as they are what I know about and spend all my time photographing, however they are not the only forms of photography that I would apply these 'rules' to. Anything documentary based; news publishing and sports pop to mind - I would apply the 'rules' to.  More 'arty' photography (for lack of a better term), for example, portraits and advertising, I would say is far, if not infinitely different, in that you can distort reality to whatever crazy thought comes into your head.

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What's Next
That's the end of this post, I could have gone into more detail but hopefully you now understand my viewpoint (which I would say is a lot more lenient toward a heavy edit than most photographers would be). This topic hasn't come completely out of the blue; I have an assignment to do over the next few months, of which I have complete control over.  My current train of thought is looking at the change in landscape photography in the past 100 years or so.  The series would include technological change, different eras of art and different styles of photographers at the time and would involve me replicating these styles in a portfolio.  At the moment, this is just one idea of a few and so I'll be checking how feasible it is and whether or not the results will be worth the time spent completing.  But I'll have another post to make soon and so I'll try and talk again about what's coming up!