PhotoNaturalist - nature photography tips and tutorials
nature photography tips and tutorials
Although they’re simple looking images, here are a few tips for photographing them:
With silhouettes, you’ll usually want an out of focus background to help draw attention to your silhouetted subject. A telephoto lens will help you here by reducing depth of field. They’re not always required though (the image above was taken with a 50mm lens). [Read more…] about 8 Tips For Photographing Silhouettes
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:
The 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
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