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Photographing The Solar Eclipse

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Annular Solar EclipseOn Monday, August 21, there will be a Total Solar Eclipse, visible from North America. The next one visible from North America won’t be until 2024.

A solar eclipse is when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth. This upcoming eclipse is special though because it’s a “total” eclipse, meaning the Moon will completely block the bright light of the sun, leaving only the outer edge (the corona) visible. If you’ve never seen one, they’re pretty cool to watch (just make sure you watch them safely!).

I don’t have much experience with photographing solar eclipses, but I did some research on how to photograph them properly, and below are some great resources I found: [Read more…] about Photographing The Solar Eclipse

Watch The Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

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Photo by anttler (used under the CC-Attr-NC-ND license)
Photo by anttler (used under the CC-Attr-NC-ND license)
Every year between July and August, you can watch the Perseids meteor shower in the night sky. This year it’s supposed to peak on the night of August 13, so any night this week you should be able to see a good amount of meteors streaking across the sky. And, the Perseids is especially great this year because it occurs during a new moon, so the meteors won’t have to battle the brightness of the moon in the sky — allowing you to see MUCH more! 🙂

To increase your chances of seeing some meteors, it’s also good to get away from the light pollution of cities. You want the sky as clear and as dark as possible. [Read more…] about Watch The Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

How To Photograph The Lunar Eclipse

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Lunar Eclipse (2011) / Photo by Steve Berardi
Lunar Eclipse (2011) / Photo by Steve Berardi
On October 8th (this Wednesday), there will be a total lunar eclipse. It’ll be visible from much of North and South America, Australia, and much of Asia (see map).

In a total eclipse, the moon turns red (due to the way the light from the Sun is scattered as it passes through our atmosphere), and it’s truly a beautiful sight!

Here are some tips for photographing the eclipse: [Read more…] about How To Photograph The Lunar Eclipse

Introduction To The Types of Natural Light

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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

PhotoPills – New App For Planning Landscape Images

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PhotoPills - ScreenshotOne of the great things about being a nature photographer in the digital age is that we have all these wonderful apps to help us plan our shots. And, now with the smartphone we can bring many of these apps along with us in the wilderness.

I’ve already talked about a few of these great apps, such as The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) and Stellarium. But, I just discovered another one that can be extremely useful in planning landscape images: PhotoPills.

PhotoPills actually does a ton of stuff, but there’s one thing it does better than any other app I’ve seen: it can tell you exactly WHEN the sun/moon will rise over a distant mountain (or lake, tree, etc) as viewed from a specific location. [Read more…] about PhotoPills – New App For Planning Landscape Images

3 Tools To Help Prepare You For the Annular Eclipse This Weekend

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This Sunday, May 20th, there will be an annular solar eclipse, visible from parts of Asia and the western United States. I wrote a detailed post about the eclipse last month, which includes some great links to maps, but I forgot to list some tools to help you scout out a location to photograph this rare event. So, if you’re a procrastinator like me and still haven’t planned out your shot, here are some helpful tools:

#1 – Photographer’s Ephemeris

Photographer's EphemerisThe Photographer’s Ephemeris is an essential tool for any landscape photographer, because it helps show you where the Sun and moon will rise or set, and overlays that on top of a Google map. If you’d like to try and photograph the eclipse as part of a landscape, then this software can help show you where the Sun and moon will be in relation to a particular landscape feature (such as a mountain or lake). There’s a free desktop version, and an inexpensive iPhone/iPad/Android version as well. [Read more…] about 3 Tools To Help Prepare You For the Annular Eclipse This Weekend