Question about skies

[PhotoDonkey]

"The further you 'stray' from those conditions, the less effect": those conditions include atmospheric conditions. If there's a lot of dust or moisture/humidity in the air – minuscule floating particles – the sun's originally uni-directional light gets bounced around by a gazillion tiny little mirrors and lenses and so scattered in just as many directions. Ergo: nothing to polarize.
This is why polarizing often works so well at the beach/seaside, and at sea: it's always very windy there and that cleans the air of dust. So no tiny little mirrors floating in the air, to scatter the sunlight. It stays unidirectional until it hits your lens.

What about South Dakota, PD? Is there a lot of dust in the air there maybe?

South Dakota suffers from more humidity than other portions of the country. We do get alot of windy days, but we also tend to see more dust blowing around on those days. So my guess is that the skies here just aren't as deep blue as in other places. My wife is from Texas and she says that the skies here aren't as blue as they are in her hometown. So I think Alfred might have hit the nail on the head.

 

[Alfred D.]

OOPS! Where I said 'unidirectional' I meant of course 'monodirectional'...
Sorry.

 

[STICKMAN]

Well heck I've been doing it all wrong lol........ I will give it a go this way next time out for certain. This place rocks, I swear I learn something new everytime I log on. Thanks to everyone....

 

[Alfred D.]

Rotating the cir. pol. filter to its max effect??? Can you explain furthur I have a D-40 which i use a cir. pol filter on. No one ever explained it to me I just threaded it and started shooting. I prob just made a a_ _ of my self but hay thats how we learn sometimes.

AHA!
The dime drops: that explains the contrast and saturation in this photo of yours! So that really was an accident. You didn't exercise any real control over the CP.