As you know, I enjoy my hobby of photography. I’m nothing, but an amateur, yet I think over the past years I’ve come up with a number of really nice photographs.

However there is a certain type of scenery that always gave me trouble - landscapes on a bright day. Usually you see beautiful sky with detailed clouds and nice shadows on the land from the mountains and trees. You take a picture only to find out later that it didn’t capture any of the beauty that you could see. Either the sky comes out great with all the details on the land lost to underexposure, or all the land details come through to have all the clouds and sky colors lost to overexposure.

Turns out the solution is rather simple - neutral density gradient filter. On our last trip to Colorado we stopped by a photo store and bought a mounting kit (which lets you easily put on several filters and adjust the horizon line easily) and the filter itself. Circular filter would definitely had a lot of limitations in a setup like that, but the rectangular one works perfectly. I really enjoyed using this great product, and recommend it to anyone who’s having the same problems with landscapes. Check out the difference on the picture above with and without the filter.

Another thing that we recently added was a special camera bag to take on our trips - Lowepro SlingShot 100 AW. We tried to find the one as comfortable and as small as possible, since we had one already that we bought a while ago, but it’s used to store it all of our gear at home. That backpack is way to big to be convenient to take on trips. The new one holds a camera and a couple of lenses. Plus you can take the camera out easily without taking the bag off, as it can swing around instead.