Outdoor Photography How To

Kamchatka, Eastern Russia: I am standing at the crater rim of the active Tolbachik volcano, taking pictures. Suddenly the volcano spits out a red-glowing lava bomb that is heading precisely in my direction. Luckily enough it doesn’t hit me but lands just by my side. Although afraid at first, I delightedly grab my camera: this is a rare opportunity to take close-up shots from still very hot and glowing cinder bombs.

Today we’re going to discuss lens fogging—a serious problem that plagues outdoor photographers this time of year. When this occurs you’ll either miss a spontaneous opportunity while waiting for a lens to clear up, or you’ll snap the shutter and end up with a worthless photo.

It’s not uncommon to end up with underexposed photos if you don’t carefully compensate for bright light sources in the background of a scene. But mistakes are meant to fixed, not trashed, as you’ll see in the Lightroom tutorial below.

Sometimes when photographing wildlife at a game reserve, the zoo (or even in the field) there's a fence between you and your subject that really messes up a shot. In this quick tutorial from Photoshop PixelFie you'll learn how to effortlessly remove these unwanted distractions.

We frequently preach our strong preference for fixing a disappointing photo instead of deleting it—especially when the image captured a rare and spectacular moment that won't be repeated. Not only can this exercise create a great image for your gallery, but it's also a valuable teaching moment so that you don't repeat shooting mistakes in the future.

So you photographed a gorgeous landscape scene with a great sky and beautiful colors throughout the frame, only to return home, view your "money shot" on the computer, and discover that the tones in the photo only vaguely resemble what you saw through the viewfinder.

Wildlife and nature photography is certainly a niche market but it turns out to be bigger than many think. According to our contributing photographers in this month’s column, photos of nature and wildlife can be sold for a broad range of uses, including stock, editorial, book publishing, interior design, fine art, and even assignment. Other important questions we ask our wildlife and nature photographers this month include what does it take to make your passion for these subjects a business? How do you market and promote your images?