Travel Photography How To

If you’ve been around the block more than once you’re no doubt familiar with many of the “rules” of composition. Budding outdoor photographers are told to use the Rule of Thirds, always include the foreground to create a sense of depth, and never position a subject in the middle of the frame or bisect a shot with the horizon.

Vibrant nighttime street scenes, brilliant sunsets, vivid parades, and automobile light trails after dark are just a few of the many opportunities for eye-popping photos. But if you don’t do things right, the impact is lost.

A couple weeks ago we brought you some breaking news about a Super Resolution feature in Adobe Camera Raw that effectively quadruples the size of an image. Our take was that this capability would be particularly useful for those using older cameras with a lower pixel count, thereby enabling some cropping while still ending up with a relatively large file.

When it’s time to edit our photographs, most of us upload the files to Lightroom or Photoshop and jump right in. But according to one of our favorite image-editing instructors, there’s an important preliminary step that’s often ignored.

Everyone knows that “blue hour” is a great time for photography; whether you’re shooting cityscapes, travel images, or other types of outdoor photos. Typically lasting 20-30 minutes, blue hour is that magical time immediately after sunset or just before sunrise. The exact timing of blue hour varies by location, and changes depending upon the time of year.

Most of our tutorials involve tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to capture more compelling images. But today we’re going to switch things up by describing what NOT to do when shooting landscape, travel, and nature images.

Hasselblad has been an iconic brand for decades—particularly among medium format film photographers. Long known as a purveyor of premium cameras for pros, the company received a new jolt of relevance with the recent introduction of its compact X-series digital medium format models.