PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials

nature photography tips and tutorials

sky

Never Give Up On a Sunset

by 13 Comments

After watching and photographing a lot of sunsets, it’s tempting to start thinking that you can look at the sky and predict how good a sunset will be a few hours before it happens.

You might see a bunch of thick and dark gray clouds up there, and think, “well, the sunset is gonna suck tonight, so I might as well just go home early.”

Or, you might even be in the middle of photographing a sunset and you think the colors just peaked, so you start packing up your stuff and walk towards your car or campsite.

But, then out of nowhere, the sky decides to explode with color again. Of course, you’re half way back to your car by now, so you quickly setup your camera, but before you can press the shutter button, the colors fade away again. And, this time they’re gone for good.

Sound familiar? [Read more…] about Never Give Up On a Sunset

How to Fix a Washed Out Sky In Photoshop

by 13 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi
One of the common problems you’ll run into while using a wide-angle lens with a polarizer is a partly washed out sky. The photo on the left illustrates this ugly problem.

It happens because the polarizer works better on some parts of the sky than others. And, since you’re capturing such a wide part of the sky with a wide-angle lens, you’re almost always going to run into this problem.

Sure, you could avoid this problem all together by not using a polarizer on a wide-angle lens, but then you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the other great benefits of the polarizer: reducing unwanted reflections, and saturating colors. [Read more…] about How to Fix a Washed Out Sky In Photoshop