Outdoor Photography How To

Ways to be bright when it gets dark.

Low-light photography can yield some amazingly striking and unusual images. But it also presents a problem. You need a fast enough shutter speed to prevent camera-shake-induced image blurring, and sometimes to "freeze" a moving subject. You often need to shoot at a small enough aperture to provide adequate depth of field. You want to use the...

Sun & Games Fun with the sun...and more

1. Sun Stars
Your wide-angle lens at its smallest aperture can turn the sun into a star in your photos—fitting, since the sun actually is a star. The effect occurs because the tiny aperture diffracts the incoming light rays a lot. This diffraction causes the star effect. You can include the sun as a compositional. Photo by...

All photos by Don Gale

Have you ever embarked on an exciting wilderness adventure that promised great photo opportunities, only to be disappointed with your images after you got home? Maybe the skies in your pictures weren't as blue as you remembered them, or the colors as vivid. Perhaps the grand vistas you experienced appeared a little washed-out in your...

There are a number of ways to portray "heat" in a photograph. First of all, you can use color. Perhaps more than any other design element, color determines the mood of your pictures. You can establish the entire mood of your photo by emphasizing a particular color scheme—reds, golds, and oranges are...

Adding a filter or two to your camera bag is a quick and relatively inexpensive way to improve your photos

How can you tell if you need filters? Take this quick test: Do you take photographs? If the answer is yes, you very likely need some filters to get the best possible images. Here are some that can really improve many of your future photos.

When a photo emphasizes a particular color, it often dictates the mood of the picture—be it warm or cool, bright or muted. Blue is usually associated with soothing, cool and more-somber moods. Conversely, the color red conjures up emotions like passion, heat, love, and even anger.

We often...

All photos by Mike Stensvold unless otherwise stated.

It's probably true that real artists are born, not made. But there is a lot anyone can do to make his or her photographs more interesting, and the tips on these pages should help you improve yours.

Seeing is the fun part of...