The Landscape Photography Book

In Every Landscape Photographer’s Bag: A Circular Polarizer

You’ll need one of these filters for two reasons. The first is to cut through reflections. This is actually its main job—to cut through reflections in water and streams and such, and it does a terrific job (kind of like putting on a pair of sunglasses—they cut the glare big time). The second is to make a washed-out sky look darker and more blue. That’s when the circular part comes in handy, because you can rotate it to choose how much polarization you want, especially helpful when shooting the sky or reducing reflections in water (you don’t always want to remove all the reflections in ...