Photo How To

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.

If you’ve been following our ongoing Lightroom tutorials you know Adobe has made great strides with their most recent updates, and the latest masking tools have created quite a buzz—with several new portrait-related masks that work pretty well.

Guess what? Even professional shooters screw up on occasion; so don’t feel too bad about making mistakes. The trick is to not make the same error twice, and one way to avoid that is to learn from the foibles of experienced pros.

What should you do when creativity is at low ebb, there’s no time to travel to a compelling destination, and you’re simply out of fresh ideas? One simple solution is to take a photo walk in the town where you live (or even around the block from your home).

Many inexperienced photographers make a simple mistake than can compromise the quality of their photos, and that’s thinking of a camera’s metering-mode options as a set-it-and-forget-it feature. If you’re guilty of this common error, the video below is for you.

Let’s fact it: Landscape photography can be really expensive. Not only do you need a good camera and an arsenal of great glass, but a solid tripod, filters, and a closet full of hiking gear and apparel for all seasons.