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Landscape photographers often shoot at smaller apertures to increase depth of field in their images. But while that technique can deliver an “acceptable” zone of sharpness in both the foreground and background, there’s a better approach if what you’re striving for are spectacular images in which acceptable isn’t good enough.

Whether you’re photographing exotic beetles in the rainforests of Ecuador like entomologist Phil Torres, or shooting more common insects in your backyard, the video below will help you capture dramatic images that look like they were shot in the studio.

Like many techniques we employ when processing our images, a little sharpening goes a long, long way. And as Tony Northrup demonstrates in the video below, photographers who get too heavy-handed with making their images crispy, often inadvertently destroy what would otherwise be a nice photograph.

Wildlife and nature are favorite subjects of our readers so we had tons of amazing images posted for this assignment in our online gallery at Shutterbug.com. We had asked that before you went ahead and submitted every photo you’d ever shot of a bird or flower, that you should take some time sorting through your wildlife and nature images to pick out something truly special. 

Many so-called “serious” shooters turn up their noses at mobile photography. But as you’ll see in the video below, we can all learn a thing or eight from photographers who know their way around a smartphone.

It sounds like a reference to dull Halloween costumes, but I’ve always regarded unsharp masking as the Cadillac option for beefing up the acutance of my photos. Admittedly, this is probably just a reaction to the fact that unsharp masking has a complicated dialog box in Photoshop, and my reptilian brain is dazzled by lots of controls.

Photographer Jo-Anne McArthur captured this adorable image of conservationist Raabia Hawa and her then newly rescued blind kitten Puppy outside of Nairobi, Kenya, last year.