Nature Photography How To

We’ve long been enamored with the stunning imagery of nature photographer Jim Peterson whose work exhibits both a keen eye for composition and a technical mastery of our craft. Based in Sedona, Arizona, Peterson conveys his vision of the world through a broad portfolio of infrared and conventional photographs. 

If you’ve ever marveled at a spectacular landscape photograph and wondered how it was made, there’s a good chance the photographer employed a luminosity masking technique in Photoshop that provides extremely precise control over post-processing adjustments.

Greg Benz is an accomplished landscape photographer with some serious post-processing skills, and in this Photoshop tutorial he reveals how to create epic seascape images by blending a series of photos into one killer shot.

From my perch on a rock outcrop above the Arctic River, I could make out every detail of the valley. The autumn tundra was a mosaic of red, orange, and yellow. The river flowed pale blue below the gray of storm clouds that were, in turn, lit with just a hint of sunset light. 

We’re all familiar with the common dilemma when shooting landscape photos in which a compromise has to be made between a blown-out sky and an overly dark foreground. In the video below, image-editing expert Nick Page demonstrates why an exposure-blending technique is far more effective than global highlight/shadow adjustments or using an HDR plugin.

Color Flow

Last October Shutterbug reader Neil Williams planned a two-day trip to Asheville, North Carolina, “to get some fall color on the Blue Ridge Parkway but the weather didn’t cooperate (heavy rain and complete lack of visibility).” So, he decided to change course slightly and make a quick trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee instead.