Nature Photography How To

 

 

 

One of the most challenging—and gratifying—subjects to photograph is wildlife. The primary obstacle is getting close enough to wild animals to take dramatic photos of them. Your best bet is a telephoto lens—a few point-and-shoot film cameras offer built-in zooms as long as 200mm at the telephoto end, and...

Most landscape photographers always carry a polarizing filter to solve a bunch a problems. These affordable tools let you darken pale blues skies, reduce reflections on water and other non-metallic objects, and even boost saturation if need be. But as you'll see in this tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel, these benefits often come at a cost.

There are many ways to plan, prepare and work in nature that can benefit your photography, make you more efficient and keep you safe. Determining what I would need for a 3-day assignment with nothing but a backpack to store all of my food, clothing and photo equipment made my job easier as I headed into Yosemite’s backcountry (#1). How you prepare makes a huge difference in how you work. In musical terms, this is your sound check, and since a musician rarely plays cold, as photographers we too should create our own run-through before the performance.

Technical skills are undoubtedly important, but sometimes they're not enough to capture images with maximum impact. That's because even if you know your way around the camera your images will suffer if you're not equally adept at composing scenes in the field.

If you're unfamiliar with an in-camera technique known as "Expose to the Right" (ETTR) this tutorial explains the concept and demonstrates how one of our favorite pros uses it to nail exposure every time and get the best possible image quality out of every shot. The pro hack takes less that nine minutes to explain, and it will prove invaluable for every image you shoot in the great outdoors.

Whether you shoot landscapes, wildlife, sports, or just about any other type of photos, if you miss focus you’ve pretty much botched the job. That’s because unsharp results are one of the most common ways to spoil an otherwise great scene.

Some diehard photographers are committed to "getting right in the camera" while refusing to edit their images, whether it's to adjust exposure, modify color, or even adjust composition with cropping. This eye-opening tutorial from Landscape Photography University takes a contrarian view by explaining why a failure to crop can often spoil an otherwise great shot.