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How to Give Your Photography a Turbo Boost

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Lake Tahoe
Photo by Steve Berardi
You know those turbo boosts that you get in car racing video games? You’ll be driving along, struggling to get out of 9th place, but then you use a few turbos and BOOM––all of a sudden you’re cruising in 1st place! Woohoo!

Do you ever wish you could use those turbos in real life too?

Well, in photography, you can! Sort of.

The secret is to dedicate at least one full week to nothing but photographing nature. It’s kind of like a mini photography boot camp.

Take a week off work, and go on a long road trip, visiting places you’ve never been before, but have always wanted to check out. It’s important for these places to be “fresh” to you, because it’ll excite you to visit someplace new and that usually translates to a stronger urge to create a photograph. [Read more…] about How to Give Your Photography a Turbo Boost

Top 10 PhotoNaturalist Posts of 2010

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With 2010 coming to a close in a few days, I thought it’d be good to check out the top posts of the year. So, here they are:

  1. How to Photograph Dragonflies (free ebook)
  2. 5 Reasons to Minimize Your Gear
  3. 5 Great Resources for Nature Photographers
  4. Why You Should Memorize the F-Number Series
  5. Quick Tip For Getting Sharper Wildlife Photos
  6. 9 Tips For Photographing Wildflowers With a Point and Shoot Camera
  7. How to Photograph Wildflowers With Flash
  8. The OTHER Reason to Use a Tripod
  9. How Do You Know When to Upgrade Your Equipment?
  10. What Went Wrong With This Sand Dune Photo?

I hope you had a great holiday season and a great year! And, cheers to a whole new year of capturing natural light 🙂 [Read more…] about Top 10 PhotoNaturalist Posts of 2010

What a TV Show Can Teach You About Photography

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TV
Photo by Michael Pereckas / Used under the CC-Attr license
A few months ago, I was lucky enough to have one of my favorite TV shows (Dexter) filmed right outside my apartment building. They filmed a scene in the alley of my building, and I was able to watch the whole thing from my porch! If you’re a fan of the show, pay close attention to that scene in the alley of Episode 4 in Season 5–that’s my alley!

Anyway, I watched them film the scene for a few hours and actually learned a couple of things about photography: [Read more…] about What a TV Show Can Teach You About Photography

Learn by Example in my new eBook!

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Today, I’m happy to announce that my new eBook, Examples, is now available. It’s a collection of 23 of my images and the stories of how those images were made.

The idea was inspired by my firm belief that the best way to learn something is by example. As Albert Einstein put it, “Learning by example isn’t the best way to learn. It’s the only way to learn.”

I remember countless times back in school when I was struggling to understand something, but as soon as the teacher gave us an example or stepped through a problem detail by detail, I finally began to understand.

Examples help us pull concepts together and see how those concepts apply to actual problems. And, that’s my goal for this eBook. Throughout the book, you’ll find a number of links to blog posts I’ve written, or other helpful websites I’ve found that explain a concept I used to create an image. [Read more…] about Learn by Example in my new eBook!

Introduction to Filters for Digital Cameras

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With film photography, filters were pretty important (especially for black and white images). And although they play a much smaller role in digital photography, there’s still a few filters you should be familiar with. So, here’s a brief introduction to some of them: [Read more…] about Introduction to Filters for Digital Cameras

How to Photograph Wildflowers with Flash

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Blue Lechenaultia (Lechenaultia biloba) / Photo by Rob Neave
Blue Lechenaultia (Lechenaultia biloba) / Photo by Rob Neave

Note from Steve: This is a guest post written by Rob Neave, of Perth, Western Australia. In this post he talks about an interesting technique for photographing wildflowers with flash.

As always, if youʼre also interested in writing a guest post, please feel free to contact me. Thanks!
________

My state of Western Australia is wildflower central for the known universe. For years, I was entranced by their potential as photographic subjects, but could not figure out how to do it. Eventually I bought a book called “Field Photography” by Alfred A Blaker, which showed me how to get decent shots of wildflowers.

Although the techniques presented in Blaker’s book were originally written for film photography, I have been able to also apply them to digital photography and ETTL flash.

The photo above is an example of what you’ll be able to do with these techniques. The flowers in the photo are Blue Lechenaultia. This image shows the detail and depth of field (DOF) we can get with these techniques. It was shot at f/32 and 1/200 with flash. [Read more…] about How to Photograph Wildflowers with Flash