Of course, I’ve always known that you can use a polarizer to darken the sky. When you are at right angles to the sun. And I knew something of how they could reduce reflections, as in windows or ponds. But I had never taken that to heart and thought of it being relevant to what I have found to be one of my biggest complaints; leaves getting blown out by strong sunlight. But today I had a thought, and did a test, and yes, a polarizer can fix these leaves.

Now these two photos might be extreme examples, and in practice I might want to scale the polarizer back, so there was a little reflection – for example, in this case, I would want you to know that the sun was shining, quite brightly in fact – but this was a big eye opener. I hope I can remember to apply this lesson in the future.