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nature photography tips and tutorials

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Never Give Up On a Sunset

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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

How to Fix a Washed Out Sky In Photoshop

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Photo by Steve Berardi
One of the common problems you’ll run into while using a wide-angle lens with a polarizer is a partly washed out sky. The photo on the left illustrates this ugly problem.

It happens because the polarizer works better on some parts of the sky than others. And, since you’re capturing such a wide part of the sky with a wide-angle lens, you’re almost always going to run into this problem.

Sure, you could avoid this problem all together by not using a polarizer on a wide-angle lens, but then you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the other great benefits of the polarizer: reducing unwanted reflections, and saturating colors. [Read more…] about How to Fix a Washed Out Sky In Photoshop

5 great resources for nature photographers

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When I started this website, I listed a few great resources on the right sidebar, but I just realized that I’ve never written about them in a post before. So, I thought I’d take a moment to list them here and explain how each one can be helpful on your journey to photograph the wonderful natural world:

mooncal

#1 – Moon Phase Calendar

This website will show you the moon phases for the current calendar month. It’s helpful when you’re trying to plan a landscape shot and need the moon to be in a specific phase (mostly likely full). I usually just use it as a sort of “quick look” planning tool, and then move on to the next site for more details. [Read more…] about 5 great resources for nature photographers

Sometimes the view is better from above

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Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
Ansel Adams shot a lot of his landscape photos from a platform he built on top of his car. Can you guess why he did this?

He did it to add more depth to his landscapes and create a better overlook of the foreground.

We’re so accustomed to viewing a landscape at eye level, that sometimes when you raise that point of view just a little bit, you’ll get a new perspective and a new emotion. [Read more…] about Sometimes the view is better from above

Why timing is everything for landscape photography

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Photo by Jurvetson (used under the CC-Attr-2.0 license)
Photo by Jurvetson (used under the CC-Attr-2.0 license)
During the day, lighting conditions are usually pretty consistent. Sure, the Sun may hide behind a cloud for a minute or two, or a storm may roll in, but on most days, you’ll have pretty consistent light throughout the day (at least from the perspective of a landscape photographer).

But, that all changes during the golden hours–those precious moments of warm sunlight that occur around sunrise and sunset.

During these times, the quality of light constantly changes as the Sun rises or sets and the light scatters more through the atmosphere. Add some clouds in there, and you’ll see some really drastic changes–in minutes or seconds.

To illustrate just how drastic the light can change during a sunrise, here’s a photo I took at the Alabama Hills (Eastern Sierra, California), about 15 minutes before sunrise: [Read more…] about Why timing is everything for landscape photography