PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Avoid walking through the middle of dunes, since that’ll mess up those nice lines in the sand and ruin any opportunity to photograph the dune. Instead, walk around dunes, or only walk through dunes you know you don’t want to photograph. [Read more…] about 6 Tips For Photographing Sand Dunes
When I first get a camera, I always set the right date and time, but then I usually completely forget about it. A few daylight savings time changes go by, and of course I forget to update the time, so for half the year, my cameras are an hour off.
But, there’s also a few other problems: when I first set the clock, I’m usually pretty lazy about it (if a nearby clock says 7:34 PM, I’ll just set the camera to 7:30 PM). Also, a lot of digital clocks lose seconds over time, so with a camera that’s a few years old, my clock could be off by 5-10 minutes (plus any adjustments for daylight savings).
Why does this matter? [Read more…] about Why You Should Keep Your Camera’s Clock Accurate
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
But, photographing a landscape with the moon is a little tricky and requires some patience.
One of the problems is that the moon won’t always be where you want it to be. And, since the moon is so far away, sometimes it’s hard to get both your foreground AND the moon in sharp focus.
So, here are a few tips for dealing with these problems: [Read more…] about How to Photograph Landscapes With the Moon
I’ve written about The Photographer’s Ephemeris before: it’s a free desktop application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It’s a tool that helps show you the exact position of the sun and moon on a particular time of day, overlaying their azimuths on top of a Google Map.
It’s hard to explain the entire program in one sentence because it does so much. But, it’s a tremendous tool for landscape photographers, because it can help you scout out areas and determine ahead of time if the sun will shine on a particular mountain peak at sunset.
Well, this great tool is now available for the iPhone too! Here’s a list of the app’s great features: [Read more…] about Photographer’s Ephemeris now available for iPhone!
When I started this website, I listed a few great resources on the right sidebar, but I just realized that I’ve never written about them in a post before. So, I thought I’d take a moment to list them here and explain how each one can be helpful on your journey to photograph the wonderful natural world:
This website will show you the moon phases for the current calendar month. It’s helpful when you’re trying to plan a landscape shot and need the moon to be in a specific phase (mostly likely full). I usually just use it as a sort of “quick look” planning tool, and then move on to the next site for more details. [Read more…] about 5 great resources for nature photographers