Nature Photography How To

When most photographers anticipate perfect weather for shooting outdoors, they’re hoping for a balmy windless day, soft golden light, and a few billowing clouds in the sky. But not intrepid landscape pro Thomas Heaton, who has a totally different take on what constitutes fun and optimum photo opportunities in the great outdoors.

Photography gives us the ability to freeze moments in time that are impossible for the human eye to see. The collision of a drop of water with a pool of water is an event that is intriguing to see, and without the aid of a camera and flash it would be impossible to study, appreciate and admire.

Some of you may remember Tom Anderson (AKA MySpace Tom), the Founder of MySpace who sold his social network to Rupert Murdock back in 2005 for a cool $580 million. Ever since, Anderson’s motto is “stop working and start playing” and he’s done that by pursuing a passion for photography.

Whether you’re an accomplished wildlife shooter or you just enjoy photographing birds in the backyard, it’s likely you pop off dozens of images when an interesting subject appears. If so, the video below will be a big help.

Cropping photos is easy, right? You start with either a horizontal or vertical photo and trim it a bit to get tighter or remove distracting elements. Of if you want to be really wild (and have enough resolution) maybe you crop in a way that transforms a portrait orientation into a landscape perspective.

Upscaling photos is a common task, and there are a variety of ways to get the job done. Discussions about which method to use, however, typically revolve around how images look on the computer screen at 100% or more.

Photographers revere the Golden Hour, but when does it actually get dark? You have a rough idea of when night falls where you live, but what if you’re traveling to a distant location in another time zone? Here’s a link to a US Navy website that will fetch all pertinent sunrise and sunset information that you need.