Wildlife Photography How To

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeastern Alaska consists of 19,286,722 acres along the Alaskan North Slope, and supports a greater diversity of flora and fauna than anywhere else in the Arctic Circle. It was established in 1960 and is governed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It receives only about 1,500 visitors a year.

Today’s camera gear is faster than ever and much of it is tailor-made for capturing any sort of motion or movement. So then why do so many photographers struggle to shoot compelling images of action? Part of it has to do with timing and part of it has to do with composition. Your camera and lens can only do so much and there’s more to a great action shot than simply capturing the moment and making sure it’s in focus. For this assignment, we were looking for images of anything from basketball to dance to wildlife, just as long as there was some kind of action in the scene. For the winning images, we were looking for great composition, effective use of backgrounds and scenery, and powerful emotion: human, animal, or otherwise. Here are our six favorites.

Without a doubt, this month's Wildlife and Nature assignment brought out the best in Shutterbug readers. There were so many excellent entries, we could've easily picked twice as many favorites and still felt we left some great shots out. In the end, we narrowed it down to 10 wildlife and nature images that truly stood out.

Do you understand the difference between a camera's optical viewfinder (OVF), electronic viewfinder (EVF), sand shooting in Live-View mode? There are important distinctions that affect how you work, and this tutorial from the Adorama TV YouTube channel explains everything you need to know.

We repeatedly discuss the concept of sharpness because it's such a critical component of all really good images. But there's an oft-ignored concept that you may not have heard until now; revealing why some sharp images appear soft to you and the viewer .

Image noise can really ruin an otherwise nice photo with ugly artifacts that appear as random speckles of grain and unsightly variations in the brightness and colors of your shot. It's a rather common occurrence, shrouded in a common misconception, that's demystified in the tutorial below.

Poet Munia Khan one said, “If I were a flower, the hummingbird would be my favorite bee,” and these words could equally apply to photographer Tracy Johnson whose passion for these tiny birds turned into an obsession with some very beautiful results.