Outdoor Photography How To

Autumn is a season of change, accompanied by colorful foliage, pumpkin patches, and costumed children decked out for Halloween. Days become shorter and the sun is positioned lower in the southern sky, creating warmer light than in the summer months.

If you want to photograph fall colors, find out when the peak time will be.

Nighttime photography can be a real challenge for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is arriving at a correct exposure. Other problems include specular highlights, color casts caused by streets lamps of varying temperature, and important subjects lurking in the shadows.

Whether you’re just beginning in landscape photography or consider yourself experienced, the video below is sure to improve your work. That’s because one of our favorite nature photography experts demonstrates 90% of what you need to know to capture stunning images of the great outdoors.

The official start of summer is barely two weeks away, and with the new season come some unique challenges for nature and landscape photographers, as well as just about everyone else who shoots outdoors. The tutorial below presents several solutions for solving the most common difficulties you're likely to encounter.

Today’s quick tutorial is a throwback to the days before electronic cameras, without autofocus, built-in meters, and other modern conveniences. The Sunny 16 method for determining proper exposure was one of the easiest “rules” back then, and it can bail you out of a jam today when using a full-featured camera.

Sunstars are a great way to fill an otherwise boring, cloudless blue sky with a feeling of drama and excitement. They are often a way to add a compositional element that helps draw a viewer into a scene. Technically, any light source can create a “sunstar” as long as it is a tiny point of light and the camera is set correctly. We often see the star effect in shots of buildings with their lights twinkling at dusk, or the moon in the night sky. Most commonly we see star patterns when the sun is setting on the horizon, but in this case we only see half of the sunstar because the other half is being blocked by the horizon.

Ugly Dust Spots can really spoil a photo, whether they're caused by a dirty lens or a sensor that's overdue for a cleaning. Unfortunately, conventional post-processing repairs don't always do a perfect job—especially when the artifacts are difficult to notice at first glance.