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nature photography tips and tutorials

Wildlife

How Your Clothes Affect Your Nature Photos

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Western Fence Lizard / Photo by Steve BerardiYou probably already know that you can wear camouflage to help hide yourself from wildlife in order to get closer and photograph them, but there’s also other ways your clothes can affect your photos.

It turns out that something as simple as the color of the t-shirt you’re wearing can drastically affect how close you can get to your subject.

I read an interesting article last week about a scientist, Breanna Putman, who’s studying animal fear responses, and she recently published a paper about how the color of your t-shirt can affect how close you can approach a common lizard in southern California, the Western Fence Lizard (photo above). [Read more…] about How Your Clothes Affect Your Nature Photos

Sharpness – Relative vs Absolute

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ManzanitaThe more I photograph nature, the less I’ve been concerned about sharpness. It’s not out of laziness, but from the realization that relative sharpness is much more important than absolute sharpness.

Absolute sharpness is about making your subject as sharp as possible, within the limits of your camera and lens.

On the other hand, relative sharpness is about making your subject as sharp as possible relative to other elements in that image.

This also applies to depth of field, and in this article when I mention sharpness I also mean depth of field/focus.

For example, here’s a photo with a lot of absolute sharpness: [Read more…] about Sharpness – Relative vs Absolute

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

Captive vs. Wild Images

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Common raccoon
Common Raccoon / Photo by Jim Braswell
Today’s post delves into an area we photographers often find ourselves … dealing with photographic ethics. Photographers have to constantly contend with ethics. Do you need a model release? Do you need a property release? Am I about to shoot on public property, or do I need to obtain permission to be here? As with everything in life, we have rules and regulations that we must adhere to when conducting our business. One of the most “gray areas” we encounter in nature photography is one of photographing wild animals versus photographing captive animals. [Read more…] about Captive vs. Wild Images

How To Build Your Own Flash Bracket

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Keeping on pace with my last post regarding external flash units, I’ve decided to show you one of my “do-it-yourself” (DIY) projects: building an external flash bracket. Having the majority of my lenses fitted with the same quick-release plates, this flash bracket mounts to all of them with ease and full versatility. Check it out:

Assembled Flash Bracket
Assembled Flash Bracket
[Read more…] about How To Build Your Own Flash Bracket

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!