PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials

nature photography tips and tutorials

filter

How To Make Any Lens a Macro Lens

by 7 Comments

Yucca photographed with close-up filterClose-up and macro photography is one of the most popular ways to capture the beauty of nature: whether it’s photographing tiny insects to show their amazing detail or just a simple close-up of a plant (like the Yucca leaves above).

When you think of macro photography, you might think you need a special lens, but there’s actually a few options for turning any lens into a macro lens, saving you money (and space in your backpack!).

First, it’s helpful to understand what makes a macro lens a macro lens. Well, it’s super simple: the macro lens is built to focus extremely close to objects. That’s it. A macro lens is usually at least 50mm too, but the most important part is that it focuses close.

The good news is that there’s two simple ways to make ANY lens focus closer:

  1. Extension tubes
  2. Close-up filters

I’ve already talked about extension tubes a lot here on PhotoNaturalist, and they’re excellent options because they don’t affect image quality at all. [Read more…] about How To Make Any Lens a Macro Lens

Completing Your Vision in Post-Processing

by 4 Comments

Red-tailed Hawk / Photo by Vic Berardi
Red-tailed Hawk / Photo by Vic Berardi
Note from the editor (Steve): After reading this great post by my Dad, please check out his new blog, where he’s writing about his travels, his passion for hawks, and other thoughts on life.

That term “vision”—what does it mean? For me it’s simple. When I get home from a day of shooting, I review all my photos. I intentionally look for the images that stood out when I first saw them through my viewfinder. However, I usually get confusingly disappointed when I realize the camera didn’t capture the scene exactly the way I “saw” it—or maybe the way I thought I saw it? [Read more…] about Completing Your Vision in Post-Processing

The Most Useful Filters for Nature Photography

by Leave a Comment

When photographing nature, there are many times when a photographic filter on the end of the lens can help improve the image, or give the image a different effect. Such is the case when I captured Maroon Creek (Colorado) with a Neutral Density filter:

Maroon Creek landscape, Colorado
Maroon Creek / Photo by Jim Braswell

Kind of like “creativity in a can.” What filters are most useful for shooting nature? [Read more…] about The Most Useful Filters for Nature Photography

Introduction to IR Photography

by 2 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi
Photo by Steve Berardi
Infrared (IR) photography doesn’t get much attention, but it can be extremely useful for photographing landscapes in black and white. It’s known for capturing strong contrast between vegetation and the surrounding landscape.

So, here’s a brief introduction to IR photography and its effects: [Read more…] about Introduction to IR Photography

Two Reasons For Using a Lens Hood

by 8 Comments

Photo by lmnop88a (used under the CC-Attr-2.0 license)
Photo by lmnop88a (used under the CC-Attr-2.0 license)
The lens hood is an often overlooked accessory. I see a lot of people walking around without one. Or sometimes they have one on their lens, but they’re not using it: it’s put on backwards (the storage position).

So, to help remedy this problem and motivate you to always use a lens hood (if you’re not already!), here are two great things they can do for you: [Read more…] about Two Reasons For Using a Lens Hood

Why you should keep your camera’s SENSOR super clean

by 5 Comments

Last week, I wrote a post about why it’s important to keep your lenses clean, and included an example photo to help illustrate my point.

Well, it turns out I was wrong about what caused those dust specks in the photo: they were NOT caused by dust on the lens, but instead resulted from dust on the camera’s sensor.

I’d like to thank Eric Pohl and Michael Smith for kindly correcting my error (see their comments on the original post). And, please accept my sincere apology for being wrong about this!

As Eric and Mike pointed out in their comments, dust on your lens will rarely show up in the end photo because you’ll always be focusing much farther than the front element of your lens (which is where the dust is). Ron Brinkmann put together an excellent article with great examples that helps show this.

For dust on your lens to be visible as specks in your photo, you’d have to be focusing your lens to an extremely close distance (even closer than what most macro lenses can do). So, any specks of dust you see in your final image most likely were caused by dust on your camera’s sensor. [Read more…] about Why you should keep your camera’s SENSOR super clean