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Learning From “Bad Photos”

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Photos by Steve BerardiIn teaching photography, a lot of attention is always paid to the “good photos” — pointing out what made the photo “good.” We don’t really hear much about the “bad photo” ever, but I think you can learn things from any photograph.

I’m putting “good” and “bad” in quotes here because, like I’ve said before, I don’t really think there are good and bad photos. I think it’s more of a personal choice about whether or not a photo triggers some feeling in you. So, in that sense, when I say “bad photo” here, what I really mean is a photo you took that you personally don’t like for some reason—it doesn’t say what you want it to say about your subject. [Read more…] about Learning From “Bad Photos”

Knowing Your Subject #1

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Photo by Steve BerardiKnowing your subject is important in nature photography because it helps you anticipate the perfect moment for a photograph or identify potential opportunities for a photo. You don’t have to be an expert on everything you photograph, but it helps to know a little and to continue learning more.

I’ve written about this topic in previous articles, but it’s such an important topic that I want to start a series of articles that go through specific examples of knowing your subject. So, here’s the first example 🙂 [Read more…] about Knowing Your Subject #1

How To Use Filters On Wide-Angle Lenses

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Filters on Wide-Angle LensesFilters can be very useful in nature photography, especially for landscapes. They can do all kinds of things, like get rid of unwanted reflections, saturate or darken the sky, and help you get a longer shutter speed to show motion.

But, when you’re using filters on wide-angle lenses (anything at 40mm or less), there’s one thing you need to watch out for: vignetting (like in the photo above). This usually only happens at very wide angles and if you’re using more than one filter.

So, how do you avoid this problem? Your first thought might be to avoid those wider angles when using filters, but don’t let filters limit your creative freedom! Luckily, there are a few good solutions to this problem: [Read more…] about How To Use Filters On Wide-Angle Lenses

A Simple Trick To Eliminate Lens Flare

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Lens Flare

I recently acquired a Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 Lens to use with my Canon 80D body for tree photography. The lens is considered a wide zoom, but it doesn’t go so far as to give a fish-eye effect. It does capture a very wide angle of view, however— with its widest angle at 107°. As wonderful as this is for capturing the full width of a large area, it can also come with some tricky conditions to deal with. One of those is glare. Since I’m somewhat new to using this lens, I ran into this issue recently while photographing the crowns of large trees and pointing the camera directly upwards.

Here I am pointing my camera directly up towards the crown of the tree you see directly behind me. I wanted to capture as much of the trunk and crown as I could: [Read more…] about A Simple Trick To Eliminate Lens Flare

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