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nature photography tips and tutorials

Articles by Steve Berardi

How To Prepare Your Images For the Web

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
These days, most photographers share their images on the web (for many good reasons). But, before posting images online, there’s a few things you should do to prepare them:

#1 – Convert color space to sRGB

Color spaces are a complex topic, but to ensure the colors in your images look consistently across a wide range of screens, it’s important to convert your images to the sRGB color space before posting them online. This is the most compatible color space across all devices.

Your images may already be in the sRGB color space, but many cameras export images in Adobe RGB 1998 or some cameras have their own unique color space. Be sure to check! [Read more…] about How To Prepare Your Images For the Web

Free eBook on Landscape Photography From Anne McKinnell!

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Landscape photography is one of the most difficult types of nature photography. Since there’s so much going on in a landscape image, it’s hard to always be aware of everything and this leads to a lot of common mistakes.

Well, we’re in luck, because Anne McKinnell released an excellent eBook this week: 22 Landscape Photography Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them). It’s an extremely straight-forward guide to improving your landscape photos. And, best of all, it’s completely free!

Get the eBook here!

The eBook covers a bunch of common mistakes, such as crooked horizons, cluttered backgrounds, lack of depth, blown out highlights, and much more.

If you’re not already familiar with Anne McKinnell, she’s a great photographer, and an excellent writer and teacher. She’s written multiple books on photography, all with a ton of great reviews on Amazon. She writes in a very friendly tone that makes it easy and fun to learn. She also has a wonderful blog, where she shares more great photography tips. [Read more…] about Free eBook on Landscape Photography From Anne McKinnell!

Remember To Update Your Camera’s Clock

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Yesterday (March 8) was the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) here in the US, so I thought it’d be a good time to remind everyone to update your camera’s clock.

It’s helpful to keep the clock very accurate (down to the second!), so you can better review your photos later. Sometimes the best way to learn is to constantly review old photos and revisit your thought process of creating those images. So, knowing the exact time the image was shot can help you check other things (like where was the sun at that time?).

Having an accurate clock also helps you stitch two scenes together if you’re using multiple cameras to photograph the same scene. [Read more…] about Remember To Update Your Camera’s Clock

New eBook – 53 Tips For Nature Photography

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53 Tips For Nature PhotographyIn the last six years, we’ve published over 240 posts here on PhotoNaturalist. With each new post, it gets harder to dig through the older posts and find the ones you might be interested in. It’s one of the most common comments I get from new readers.

So, I thought now was a good time to create a “best of PhotoNaturalist” eBook that contains all of our most popular posts (but only including posts written by me, because I do not have permission to resell other writers’ posts).

The eBook is 108 pages, and has 53 of my top posts. I determined the “top posts” by looking at traffic, and how much each post was shared on social media. I also tried to include a nice balance of subjects, so I separated the posts into four sections: general, landscape, wildlife, and close-up. [Read more…] about New eBook – 53 Tips For Nature Photography

How To Photograph The Lunar Eclipse

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Lunar Eclipse (2011) / Photo by Steve Berardi
Lunar Eclipse (2011) / Photo by Steve Berardi
On October 8th (this Wednesday), there will be a total lunar eclipse. It’ll be visible from much of North and South America, Australia, and much of Asia (see map).

In a total eclipse, the moon turns red (due to the way the light from the Sun is scattered as it passes through our atmosphere), and it’s truly a beautiful sight!

Here are some tips for photographing the eclipse: [Read more…] about How To Photograph The Lunar Eclipse

How To Guide Your Viewer Through An Image

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi

When you look at a photograph, you don’t view it as a whole. Instead, you first focus on one key area that grabs your attention and then you move your eyes throughout the rest of the frame to see what else is there.

Where your eye travels from that first spot depends on the image, and how that spot guides you to another spot in the frame. In an image that has good “flow,” your eye will always know where to go next (elements of the image will guide you). But, if an image doesn’t have a natural direction of flow, then it’s harder for the viewer to move through the image (they don’t know where to start and then they don’t know where to go from there). [Read more…] about How To Guide Your Viewer Through An Image