Outdoor Photography How To

Sometimes the photos we capture don’t appear as vibrant as they did through the viewfinder. That could be because of flat light, incorrect exposure settings, or a passing cloud blocking the sun.

As you’ve no doubt learned by now there are often several ways to accomplish the same task in Photoshop. And sometimes the methods you choose depend upon what you plan do with the finished image.

As the great Ansel Adams once said, “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationship.” And that holds true whether you’re working with film in the darkroom or editing digital images on the computer.

Photo composites are a lot of fun to make, and they enable you to create eye-catching images by combining two or more shots. The problem is that there are a few hurdles to understand if you want to achieve natural looking results.

Selecting the appropriate shutter speed for a given scene is important for most types of photography if you want the best possible results. This decision is important with landscapes and wildlife shots—particularly when shooting hand-held, for scenes with motion, and while using long lenses.

Experienced landscape photographers prefer shooting at two primes times of day, early morning or late afternoon. That’s because Blue Hour, just before sunset, is a great opportunity to make images with calm, blue tones. Golden Hour, at the end of the day, enables you imbue scenes with striking warm colors as the sun is about to set.

Sunrises and sunsets are among the most popular scenes for avid landscape photographers. Early morning images usually have ephemeral soft blue tones, while sunsets typically display striking yellows, oranges and reds.