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Creative White Balance

May 15, 2018 by Steve Berardi 2 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
White balance is something that’s often overlooked in photography. It’s what controls the color temperature of your photos: an image with a red or orange tint is considered “warm” whereas an image with more bluish colors is considered “cold.” You can adjust the white balance to make an image warmer or colder.

It’s called “white” balance because it’s often thought of as the color temperature of the white colors in your image—so a “correct” white balance would be one where the natural whites in your image are actually white and don’t have a red or blue tint. But, it’s important to remember that the white balance affects the entire image, not just the white colors.

The camera is usually pretty good at guessing the correct or most natural-looking white balance, but sometimes it’s not, and other times it’s mostly correct but you might still want to adjust the color temperature to emphasize the feeling of a photograph. [Read more…] about Creative White Balance

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: balance, color, temperature, white

Flowers in Black and White

April 10, 2018 by Steve Berardi 2 Comments

Photo by Steve BerardiWhen you think about photographing flowers, you probably think about capturing their vibrant colors and how they contrast against the landscape around them. Most things in nature have evolved to blend in with their environment, but flowers have evolved to stand out from the crowd by displaying some of the most wonderful colors found in nature.

So, the thought of creating black and white images of flowers might sound crazy. But, it’s a great way to draw the viewer’s attention to other aspects of the flower. By de-emphasizing color, you move that emphasis to other things.

For example, consider the black and white photo above of a Desert Sunflower and compare it with a few color images of the same type of flower: [Read more…] about Flowers in Black and White

Filed Under: Close-Up, Macro, Philosophy, Tips, Wildflowers Tagged With: black and white, bw, color, monochrome, wildflowers

How To Add Contrast To Landscape Photos

April 15, 2014 by Steve Berardi Leave a Comment

Sunrise in the Mojave / Photo by Steve Berardi
Sunrise in the Mojave / Photo by Steve Berardi
Adding contrast to a landscape photo is one way to make it a more compelling image. When we think of the word “contrast” we usually think about contrasting colors or brightness. But, there’s also another type of contrast that you can capture in your images: subjective contrast.

Here’s a quick look at the different types of contrast and how you can capture them in your images:

Color Contrast

The most common way of adding more contrast to your images is photographing a scene with strong contrasting colors. With landscape photography, this is usually pretty easy to do around the “golden hours” — where you’ll likely have some of your scene in the shade while the rest of the scene is extra saturated with that warm light of sunrise or sunset. [Read more…] about How To Add Contrast To Landscape Photos

Filed Under: Landscapes Tagged With: black, black and white, brightness, color, composition, contrast, emphasize, golden hours, landscape, photos, subjective, white

Tips For Photographing Fall Color

September 15, 2013 by Steve Berardi 5 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
It looks like autumn might be off to an early start here in the northern hemisphere. A popular blog on California fall color has already reported some really impressive colors seen in the Eastern Sierra.

So, now’s the time to start getting ready to capture all of those amazing colors! Here are a few great tutorials that will help: [Read more…] about Tips For Photographing Fall Color

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: autumn, changing, color, fall, leaf, leaves, november, october, september

Introduction To The Types of Natural Light

August 29, 2013 by Steve Berardi 7 Comments

Mojave Desert at Sunset / Photo by Steve Berardi
Mojave Desert at Sunset / Photo by Steve Berardi
Light is something you have very little control over in nature photography, but it has a big effect on the look of your photographs so it’s important to understand how different lighting conditions will affect the look of your photograph.

Here’s a short intro to the different types of light you’ll experience, along with a few ideas of what to photograph in each type of light: [Read more…] about Introduction To The Types of Natural Light

Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: affect, color, effect, landscape, light, lighting, look, moon, moonlight, moonlit, natural, overcast, sun, sunny, sunrise, sunset, type, view

Why You Should Calibrate Your Monitor

April 2, 2013 by Steve Berardi 3 Comments

Have you ever tried ordering prints of your digital photos, but were disappointed by the results? Maybe the prints were darker or lighter than they looked on your monitor, or maybe they had a weird tint that seemed to just come out of nowhere.

Well, those problems most likely occurred because your monitor isn’t calibrated properly. The purpose of calibrating your monitor is to get it to display color as accurately as possible (so when you get your prints back from the photo lab, they look exactly like they did on your monitor). [Read more…] about Why You Should Calibrate Your Monitor

Filed Under: Gear Reviews, Tips Tagged With: adobe, calibrate, calibration, color, device, display, management, monitor, photo, print, profile, rgb, spyder4pro, srgb

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