Nature Photography How To

It's nearly mid-September, so you know what that means. It means the Halloween paraphernalia has been on display at the supermarket for nearly a month already, and the kiddos are happily (?) back in the classroom, using interactive smartphone apps to track the days until Spring Break.

But more important, it means that we'll soon be enjoying Mother Nature's fall festival of fabulous foliage. Here is the prediction map you've been waiting for, courtesy of the wonderful folks at smokymountains.com.

Landscape photos with overexposed highlights are a common problem with scenes that include a wide range of tones that exceed the dynamic range of your camera. This tutorial from the Photography Explained YouTube channel  provides a handful of simple tips for avoiding "those annoying big white patches in your images that are totally devoid of detail."

Masking is a powerful method for enhancing outdoor photos by balancing the tones throughout a scene. Unfortunately, this transformative technique is overlooked by inexperienced users who consider it too advanced for their rudimentary skills.

Do you understand the difference between Lightroom's HSL and Calibrations tools, how each one works, and which method provides the best results when processing different types of landscape and nature images? If not, this 12-minute tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel will clarify any questions you may have.

This tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel will be really helpful the next time you capture seascapes or landscape photos from the shore of a lake. As instructor Christian Mohrle says, "This Lightroom trick will make water reflections "POP!"

There are numerous so-called "rules" of photography, and one of the most common is to always shoot at ISO 100 whenever possible. This notion is particularly prevalent among landscape photographers who strive for optimum image quality and the maximum amount of detail in every image they shoot.

Today's basic Photoshop tutorial from one of our favorite landscape shooters begins with this question: "Do you run into a problem taking photos when part of the image is in focus, like the background, but other areas like the foreground are really soft? And then when you focus on the foreground instead, the opposite problem occurs."