PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Avoid walking through the middle of dunes, since that’ll mess up those nice lines in the sand and ruin any opportunity to photograph the dune. Instead, walk around dunes, or only walk through dunes you know you don’t want to photograph. [Read more…] about 6 Tips For Photographing Sand Dunes
When I first get a camera, I always set the right date and time, but then I usually completely forget about it. A few daylight savings time changes go by, and of course I forget to update the time, so for half the year, my cameras are an hour off.
But, there’s also a few other problems: when I first set the clock, I’m usually pretty lazy about it (if a nearby clock says 7:34 PM, I’ll just set the camera to 7:30 PM). Also, a lot of digital clocks lose seconds over time, so with a camera that’s a few years old, my clock could be off by 5-10 minutes (plus any adjustments for daylight savings).
Why does this matter? [Read more…] about Why You Should Keep Your Camera’s Clock Accurate
Well, as you probably already know, “automatic” doesn’t always work (especially when it comes to cameras). But, that’s what makes photography so fun 🙂
One of those automatic features of your camera that doesn’t always work is white balance.
[Read more…] about Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Auto White Balance
After watching and photographing a lot of sunsets, it’s tempting to start thinking that you can look at the sky and predict how good a sunset will be a few hours before it happens.
You might see a bunch of thick and dark gray clouds up there, and think, “well, the sunset is gonna suck tonight, so I might as well just go home early.”
Or, you might even be in the middle of photographing a sunset and you think the colors just peaked, so you start packing up your stuff and walk towards your car or campsite.
But, then out of nowhere, the sky decides to explode with color again. Of course, you’re half way back to your car by now, so you quickly setup your camera, but before you can press the shutter button, the colors fade away again. And, this time they’re gone for good.
Sound familiar? [Read more…] about Never Give Up On a Sunset
As a software developer, one of the things I do every day is refactor code. I’ll write some code to solve a problem, test it out to make sure it works, and then I’ll take another look at the code and see if there’s a way to make it more clear or more efficient. Then, of course, I’ll test it again 😉
Writers do this too. First, they’ll write a basic draft of their story to cover the main ideas, and then they’ll read it over and over again to make the words flow better and to make their message stand out more.
But, what about photographers? Do you ever take a look at one of your photos and say something like, “wow, I really like this photo of mine, but I wish one thing was different”? It doesn’t have to be something big, it could even be something as simple as moving your camera one step to the left so a tree stands out more from the background. [Read more…] about Do You Refactor Your Photographs?
Ansel Adams once said, “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” But, before you know where to stand, it’s important to understand a few concepts about perspective.
I’ve written about perspective here on PhotoNaturalist a few times, but I’ve also written a couple posts about it over at the Digital Photography School (a great blog that covers all types of photography). And, one of those posts was just published today, so I thought it’d be good to put a list together of all the posts I’ve written about perspective: [Read more…] about How Perspective Affects Your Photos