Outdoor Photography How To

OK, be honest here: Your camera has an AE-L/AF-L button, right? Do you understand how it works? Are you using it regularly? If you’re like many photographers, your answer to the first question is, “sure,” to the second question, “I think so,” and to the third question, “not really.”

The best travel and nature images include a bit of artistic flair, but there are also several common mistakes to avoid if you want your images to be really special. In the two-minute video below, an accomplished New Zealand pro summarizes the most consistent errors we make and explains how to fix them.

All outdoor photographers are at the mercy of Mother Nature, especially when shooting landscapes. That’s because sometimes you scout out a perfect scene in advance, prepare your gear, and arrive at the right time of day—only to confront disappointingly dull skies.

When it comes to photographing our feathered friends in the field, large birds tend to be the most popular, perhaps because you don’t need a super-telephoto lens to fill the frame, and these subjects are more often out in the open. But small birds have their own appeal, and with that come a unique set of challenges.

Sharpening photos isn’t particularly difficult, nor is it always necessary. But as image-editing expert Blake Rudis says, “Unlike many things in photography, sharpening is one of those tasks where there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.”

Capturing photos of landscapes at sunrise is not only great fun it can produce stunning images. But there’s more to shooting the sunrise than just getting up early.

In a perfect world we’d always arrive at a destination just before “Golden Hour,” in time to capture gorgeous landscape images with beautiful warm colors and an inviting soft glow. Since that’s not always possible we thought we’d bring you a quick post-processing tutorial for creating a similar effect in Photoshop.