Outdoor Photography How To

Whether you’re photographing birds in the backyard, planning an outing to a local zoo, or shooting big cats on safari, achieving correct exposures is absolutely essential. This task is often challenging, as subjects move in and out of ever-changing light.

Here's an important post-processing tutorial for all you avid wildlife and landscape photographers, that will help you get the white right with a little help from Lightroom. Once you do that, other colors tend to fall into place.

Manny Ortiz is a Chicago-based pro whose outdoor portrait tutorials we feature regularly. In the quick video below, he provides a behind-the-scenes look as he photographs two models at once on the streets of the windy city.

One of the most exhilarating things about being an outdoor photographer is capturing nature’s beauty and its power. And for some outdoor photographers, there’s no greater thrill than photographing one of Mother Nature’s most hair-raising spectacles: a lightning storm.

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.

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.