PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Well, I’ve recently realized how valuable it can be to also review all your photos that made it to the “good” pile, especially concentrating on your favorite images. Once we take a photo we’re proud of and post-process it and share it online or print it, we usually stop thinking about it. But, I think it’s really helpful to review these photos periodically for a variety of reasons.
Here are some things to think about when reviewing your old favorites: [Read more…] about Reviewing Old Photos
There was one painting of his that really moved me: Twilight In the Wilderness. The painting depicts a sunset over wilderness near Mount Katahdin in Maine, and was painted in 1860. The painting itself is beautiful. I love grand vistas that look down into a wilderness—they help remind me of how insignificant we all are (in a good way!), one of my favorite things about nature. But, I was moved by more than just the painting itself. After reading the description, I learned that Church debuted the painting by itself at a prestigious art gallery, instead of exhibiting it with paintings by other artists (which was the custom).
I really liked that he did this because it makes the painting more powerful. When it’s the only painting in a gallery next to a bunch of empty walls, it makes it seem more special and it makes viewers spend more time observing it. Instead of having a bunch of paintings in a gallery, that people would just casually walk by and observe for a few seconds, he had this single painting that would attract all the attention. It was like the painter said, “Here, this is the painting that matters. This is the most important work I created this year. Please take a look, and don’t hurry.” [Read more…] about Fewer Photos, More Meaning
Back in 2009, I wrote an article about the pros and cons of shooting in RAW vs JPEG. My basic conclusion of the article was that it usually makes sense to shoot in RAW, except for wildlife when you need to shoot a lot of images in a burst.
Like many things in life, as I’ve learned more and gained more experience with photography, my thoughts on RAW vs JPEG have changed.
Now, I really appreciate the freedom you get with shooting in JPEG. What do I mean by that? Well, there’s two things about RAW files that have increasingly bothered me over the years: the filesizes are much bigger (especially as megapixel counts increase), and not all software supports the latest RAW formats. [Read more…] about Rethinking RAW vs JPEG
Composition is all about creating pleasing images. It’s a difficult aspect of photography because there aren’t really any set-in-stone rules about it, and many aspects of composition are really about how you see the world uniquely from everyone else.
So although there aren’t any scripts you can follow that will always lead you to a good composition, I think there are some questions you can ask yourself that will help steer you in the right direction: [Read more…] about Questions to Guide Your Composition
When photographing a subject, do you picture in your mind just how that photo will be used? Do you ever consider multiple uses? I got caught in the trap of shooting for a single use, early in my photographic endeavors.
When putting together a series of images for a nature calendar, I found some older images that would have been wonderful to include in the calendar. But these images were all shot as verticals (or, “portraits”) and were not able to be cropped to a suitable horizontal format. In some cases, you may be able to re-crop a vertical into a horizontal, but sometimes the result is not what you are looking for. In this post, I’ll share a few things I learned along the way and how I try to shoot all my nature subjects today. [Read more…] about Photographing a Subject for Multiple Uses