Outdoor Photography How To

We were going over the photos for this story when photographer Lucas Gilman said something I didn’t entirely agree with. He was talking about making an image in which a bird came into the frame just as a surfer was making his move on a wave. “Cameras are so good now, anybody can take the exact same pictures I can,” he said, “so what I do is look for and take advantage of subtleties that others overlook. That way I separate myself from everyone else who can buy a new camera and make great pictures.”

Scott Serfas is one photographer who likes to get in on the action. In fact, he thrives on it. There is a certain amount of serendipity involved, but there is also a certain amount of passive control, in the sense that Serfas knows what to expect and expects the unexpected.

The scene is often just the starting point of a Deborah Sandidge photograph. “It’s visualization,” she says. “I’m looking at a scene and imagining what’s going to happen over time.” What was going to happen at the San Antonio, Texas, River Walk was the continuing passage of the water taxis. Sandidge knew they were the key to an expressive, dramatic photograph, one that would get as close as possible to picturing the passage of time.

Adventure photographer Jimmy Chin captured this incredible image of celebrated American climber Dean Potter highlining over Yosemite Falls in Yosemite, California, in 2010.

Shutterbug reader Yvonne Baur captured this colorful image near “The Subway,” a uniquely shaped slot canyon in Zion National Park in Utah. “This spot is right before you enter the actual Subway section of the hike and the only water you see is through this tiny crack in the sandstone,” Baur says.

Long, long ago in a land far away, photo hobbyists often used yellow filters on their lenses when shooting black-and-white film. Monochrome film was a bit more sensitive to blue light back in those days, and that caused skies and clouds to blend and become an indistinguishable mess. For reasons we’ll see later, green filters were often used for portraits.

Beautiful lighting, in many ways, is what photography is all about. And as our readers proved with this month’s submissions, if you want great lighting, all you need to do is look outside your window. While it’s not entirely surprising, our 10 favorite photos from this month’s assignment are all bathed in natural light. The results are simply radiant.