Nature Photography How To

Skillful composition can make or break a photo, no matter how impressive a subject appears, and this fact holds true whether you're shooting landscapes, environmental portraits, macro imagery, and just about anything else. This quick tutorial reveals several powerful framing techniques employed by several shooters who really know their stuff.

It can be extremely challenging to capture accurately exposed photos of scenes with a wide range of brightness values from white to black and everything in between. This tutorial from the My Photo Journey YouTube channel explains how to get the job done in the camera by selecting the oft-ignored Spot Metering mode.

The first thing most landscape photographers do upon arriving on location is set down their bag and pull out a trusty wide-angle lens. After all, what better way to capture an expansive vista? The problem with always following this routine is that your images will fail to stand out from the crowd because just about everyone else does the same thing.

Experienced Lightroom users understand why dodging and burning is an "essential" technique that enables them to control light and shadow for perfectly balanced tones through a scene. The standard approach typically works pretty well, but this tutorial reveals a unique trick that delivers absolute precision every time.

One challenge faced by all landscape photographers, especially when shooting with wide-angle lenses, is creating order out of the chaos that often appears in complicated, expansive vistas. Failing that, your images can be confusing because the viewer is unsure exactly where to look.

Many of us have busy schedules with jobs and other obligations that prevent from us being out in the field in early morning and late afternoon when Golden-Hour bathes the landscape with soft, beautiful tones. This means shooting in the middle of the day when high contrast and harsh illumination pose a difficult challenge.

Last week we posted an eye-opening tutorial describing common "myths" about ISO settings than can easily compromise the quality of landscape, nature, and wildlife photos. We're following up on that today by demonstrating how so-called "bad photography habits" may actually improve your imagery in several ways.