PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Well, I’ve recently realized how valuable it can be to also review all your photos that made it to the “good” pile, especially concentrating on your favorite images. Once we take a photo we’re proud of and post-process it and share it online or print it, we usually stop thinking about it. But, I think it’s really helpful to review these photos periodically for a variety of reasons.
Here are some things to think about when reviewing your old favorites: [Read more…] about Reviewing Old Photos
Composition is all about creating pleasing images. It’s a difficult aspect of photography because there aren’t really any set-in-stone rules about it, and many aspects of composition are really about how you see the world uniquely from everyone else.
So although there aren’t any scripts you can follow that will always lead you to a good composition, I think there are some questions you can ask yourself that will help steer you in the right direction: [Read more…] about Questions to Guide Your Composition
As a software developer, one of the things I do every day is refactor code. I’ll write some code to solve a problem, test it out to make sure it works, and then I’ll take another look at the code and see if there’s a way to make it more clear or more efficient. Then, of course, I’ll test it again 😉
Writers do this too. First, they’ll write a basic draft of their story to cover the main ideas, and then they’ll read it over and over again to make the words flow better and to make their message stand out more.
But, what about photographers? Do you ever take a look at one of your photos and say something like, “wow, I really like this photo of mine, but I wish one thing was different”? It doesn’t have to be something big, it could even be something as simple as moving your camera one step to the left so a tree stands out more from the background. [Read more…] about Do You Refactor Your Photographs?
Ansel Adams once said, “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” But, before you know where to stand, it’s important to understand a few concepts about perspective.
I’ve written about perspective here on PhotoNaturalist a few times, but I’ve also written a couple posts about it over at the Digital Photography School (a great blog that covers all types of photography). And, one of those posts was just published today, so I thought it’d be good to put a list together of all the posts I’ve written about perspective: [Read more…] about How Perspective Affects Your Photos
But, then that pace starts to slow down after you have your camera for awhile. In the beginning, maybe you’d come home with over 400 photos on your memory card, but then after a few months it turned into 200, and after a year it might even get as low as 50 per day.
What happened? At first you might think you’re losing interest in photography, or maybe you’re in some kind of artistic slump (just like baseball players who sometimes go 40 at-bats without a basehit). [Read more…] about Are You In An Artistic Slump or Just Learning?
For example, the telephoto lens is often said to “compress” your scene and make everything look flat. But, it’s not the focal length that’s doing this. It’s actually because you’re so far from the scene you’re photographing (which is how telephoto lenses are commonly used: to photograph something far away). And, it’s because of this great distance that the scene looks “flat” in the final image.
As you move farther and farther away from something, you lose visual depth. For example, if you stare at someone’s face when you’re only a foot away from them, you’ll be able to see all the curves of their face pretty clearly, but as you step farther away from them, their face will begin to look “flat.” [Read more…] about Understanding Perspective and Focal Length