PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials

nature photography tips and tutorials

Articles by Steve Berardi

Photographing The Solar Eclipse

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Annular Solar EclipseOn Monday, August 21, there will be a Total Solar Eclipse, visible from North America. The next one visible from North America won’t be until 2024.

A solar eclipse is when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth. This upcoming eclipse is special though because it’s a “total” eclipse, meaning the Moon will completely block the bright light of the sun, leaving only the outer edge (the corona) visible. If you’ve never seen one, they’re pretty cool to watch (just make sure you watch them safely!).

I don’t have much experience with photographing solar eclipses, but I did some research on how to photograph them properly, and below are some great resources I found: [Read more…] about Photographing The Solar Eclipse

Pressing The Button

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Pressing the ButtonPressing the shutter button to snap a photo seems like the most simple part of photography. I mean, you just “press the button” — right?

Well, there’s a few things to remember when pressing that button, especially when you’re handholding the camera:

1 — Press the button halfway first

You’ve probably noticed that you can press the shutter button halfway or all the way down. When you first got your camera, pressing it halfway probably initiated autofocus (but, hopefully now you use back-button autofocus).

With back-button AF (and if you’re in manual mode), pressing the button halfway does nothing to camera settings, but physically it’s important. Pressing the button all the way down in one press puts much more physical pressure on the camera than doing it halfway first, stopping for half a second and then going down the rest of the way. Physical pressure is important because with more pressure, you’re shaking the camera more and that increases your chance of getting a blurry photo and can mess up your focus point and/or composition (especially true for close-up images). [Read more…] about Pressing The Button

How To Show Depth In Landscapes

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Mojave DesertOne of the common goals of a landscape photograph is to show depth—either to show the viewer how vast a landscape is or to help lead the viewer’s eye from the foreground into the background.

You might think that adding depth is as simple as using a wide angle lens, but it’s a little more subtle than that.

Here are a few ways to show depth in a landscape photo:

1. Focus on elements that lead the viewer’s eye

The general thing to remember with capturing depth in a landscape is to focus on elements that naturally lead the viewer’s eyes through all dimensions of the landscape. This could be things like a fallen tree that points towards the back of the frame and leads the eye to the base of a mountain, or a stream that serves a similar purpose. [Read more…] about How To Show Depth In Landscapes

Watch The Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

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Photo by anttler (used under the CC-Attr-NC-ND license)
Photo by anttler (used under the CC-Attr-NC-ND license)
Every year between July and August, you can watch the Perseids meteor shower in the night sky. This year it’s supposed to peak on the night of August 13, so any night this week you should be able to see a good amount of meteors streaking across the sky. And, the Perseids is especially great this year because it occurs during a new moon, so the meteors won’t have to battle the brightness of the moon in the sky — allowing you to see MUCH more! 🙂

To increase your chances of seeing some meteors, it’s also good to get away from the light pollution of cities. You want the sky as clear and as dark as possible. [Read more…] about Watch The Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

Need Help Identifying a Bird In Your Photo? Check out this website!

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
Have you ever photographed a bird and had no idea what kind it was? Sometimes it’s easy to identify it later by looking through a bird book, and sometimes not so much. And, even when you do identify it, it’s nice to get some confirmation from other people.

Well, we’re in luck, because a team of ornithologists and computer scientists at Cornell have developed a web app called Merlin that helps you identify the bird in your photo. And, it works surprisingly well! [Read more…] about Need Help Identifying a Bird In Your Photo? Check out this website!

Using Your Smartphone As a Post-Processing Playground

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
Post-processing is one of the most important steps of creating a powerful image (as my dad wrote about in a previous post). Ansel Adams once said, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.” In modern day digital photography, post-processing leads to the “performance” part that Adams refers to. A RAW file from your camera can go in so many different directions.

In the past year or so, I’ve been really trying to improve my post-processing skills (especially with landscape images), and I discovered that one of the best ways to practice is using your smartphone.

The great thing about the smartphone is that it’s a camera and a little computer built into one small device that’s always with you. There’s tons of excellent photo editing apps that have professional editing abilities—my personal favorite is Snapseed (available for iPhone and Android), but I’ll get more into specific apps in a future post. [Read more…] about Using Your Smartphone As a Post-Processing Playground