This park is one of my favorite places to go that's nearby when I want to shoot a few outdoors/ nature type photos. It's about 1.5 miles from where I live.
In latest photos, we see more and more contrast I believe. If you guys can post some more photos with polarized filter on lens (I think there was only one so far) that would be great.
I think that the first 4 from me were shot with polarizer. This one with a G ND for the sky.
Try cleaning the polarizer with a Q tip dampened with alcohol. Dish soap works too, but you need to dry it with lint free cloth when done. Start in the middle using a circular motion, and work to the outer edges. Hold it where a bright light reflects off the surface if you want to see if it's truly clean and smear free. The polarizer will help with contrast, and with clouds.
I ran across my old Cokin color jels, from my Kodak Pan X days. Here are 3 shots, each pair is the filter color, and the B&W result with that filter. You can see the differences in the brightness levels in the white cloud and blue sky, trees and leaves in each shot. I couldn't find the holder, so I just hand held them over the end of the lens. The lens is a manual Micro Nikkor 55 f2.8, that I was using to photograph a little red mushroom that popped up in the yard this morning.
Strong color filters were a very useful item back in the day of 35mm B&W film. They had numbers like "37" to identify the exact colors. There were also a lot of filters for color white balance that we no longer have to use with digital cameras. The deep colored ones are still useful for B&W though.
Deep green filters gave strong contrast to skin tones, which was handy for portraits when you wanted the skin to look rugged.
