Comet Lovejoy cropped from a march larger image. Click to see a larger version.
If you have never photographed a comet before, this is a great chance to practice. All you need is a camera with long shutter speeds, a reasonably fast wide angle lens, and a tripod. Most any recent model DSLR will do, plus a few high end point-and-shoot (all in one) cameras.
Cougar
Most wildlife are medium to dark in tone, making them a challenge to meter properly in the bright, white tones of winter. If you trust your camera’s auto exposure modes, the odds are good you won’t get the best exposure. If you switch over to manual exposure and make the right decisions, you can get great exposures and better quality photos (more about that later).
Elk in the Snow, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Metering dark toned wildlife in the snow is a major exposure challenge. It is usually best to avoid large “burned out” areas (washed out, featureless white) in a nature or landscape photograph, but with properly exposed snow, the wildlife can be so dark as to lose all texture. On other hand, metering for the wildlife can burn out the snow.
Kristina in the Snow
The white snow in a winter scene can and often does fool a camera meter into underexposing a portrait, so here are the steps to take to get the right exposure. I throw in a few portrait suggestions too.
Sarah, Professional Fitness Trainer
Your camera is in love with middle gray. The quicker you learn how to deal with this infatuation, the better your photos will look, including all of your color photos.
Mount Hunter from a Bush Plane. Denali National Park. Alaska.
Metering for scenes with a lot of snow can be tricky since the bright snow fools the camera meter. I see a lot of winter photos with gray snow, which means the camera meter did exactly what it was designed to do and the camera owner didn’t know how to use exposure compensation. The solution is quite simple provided you know what to do.
Kristina, IMDb
One of my portraits headlines Kristina’s bio and resume pages at IMDb and six of my portraits are featured in her IMDb portfolio.
Kristin
When it is cold and breezy with the windchill in the 20s, do you stay inside by a warm fire? Of course not, not if you are a photographer. You go outside and do portraits. As long as you dress warmly in layers, you will be just fine.
Photo Data: Canon 5D Mark III. Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 35 mm. 1/1000 sec, f/8, ISO 400.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial photographed from a moving car.
I don’t usually recommend taking pictures from a moving car, but we were coming up to the Jefferson Memorial and I liked the light and the rippled reflection in the water. In the busy DC traffic, asking the driver to stop the car in the street was a recipe for disaster (and there was no place to pull over). I had to grab this shot on the fly which, from a fast moving car, is harder than you might think.
Sunrise, Gibraltar Island. HDR Image.
Compared to the human eye, digital cameras have a very limited dynamic range. Your digital camera simply can’t capture the range of tones from light to dark that your eyes can see. That is why HDR photography has become so popular with so many photographers, and absolutely essential for some commercial photographers.
Update, November 19, 2017: A revised version of this article is here.
My Favorite Photography Magazines
There are a ton of photography magazines out there and it seems like there are new ones every time I go to my favorite newsstand. But some are clearly better, more accurate, more useful, and with better images. The magazines that follow are, from my point of view, the best of the best photo magazines.
Margarita
It is all about the eyes, the eyelashes, and the shadows from the eyelashes. The studio flash units had to be set up very precisely to create these shadows.
Vermilion Lakes, Banff National Park
Vermilion Lakes (a string of three side by side lakes) just outside of the town of Banff, Alberta is a great landscape location. On this particular day the light was beautiful. Evergreens are usually quite dark in a photograph but the low side-lit angle of the sunlight was trans-illuminating the evergreens so they glowed a bright green. The lightly dimpled lake was just calm enough to give me a nice, slightly blurred reflection.
The best of the best cameras, accessories, photo books and more.
It’s the time of year that the number of photo questions I receive increases dramatically. Most of them have to do with the upcoming holiday season and gift giving questions: “What should I get for . . . .”
So once again I am revising my list of articles recommending the best photo gear, books, DVDs, software, calendars, online photo labs, and a whole lot more. As I rewrite each article I will update the links below. You can check the date at the top of each article. This is the most recent update to the list (Nov. 10, 2014).
The Milky Way, Moraine Park, RMNP
Although there is some sky glow from the cities along Colorado’s front range, you can still get some nice photos of the Milky Way from Rocky Mountain National Park.
Night Sky, Rocky Mountain National Park
This photo was taken just before the workshop photo in my last post with the same camera settings. The only difference is I left out the photographers in the foreground. I wanted to include more sky so I went with a low horizon of mountains and trees.
Photo Field Trip, RMNP. (Click to see a larger image.)
You don’t have to put your camera away just because the sun sets and the stars come out. Stay outside and have fun. Put your camera on a tripod (if it isn’t already), set your shutter on B (for bulb) and take long exposures of the night sky. Be sure to include some of the landscape.
Photo Field Trip, Rocky Mountain National Park
The last light of sunset has faded and we are waiting for the stars to come out. During the long 30 second exposure (based on a meter reading of the sky) I wandered around a fired a hand held flash at the photographers.
Photo Field Trip, Rocky Mountain National Park
Catching the last light of sunset. Workshop field trip in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Sarah
This photo is all about the back muscles. This is another photo from my shoot with Sarah who is a professional fitness trainer.
Mt Sneffels and the Sneffels Range from County Road 7 (Dallas Creek).
Mt. Sneffels is one of the most photographed peaks in Colorado. One of the best locations to create some images is along County Road 7 (Dallas Creek).
Sarah
Sarah is a professional fitness trainer and we have worked together before. We had another photo shoot Saturday morning and this is the first photo I optimized from the shoot.
Double Arch at Night, Arches National Park. Click for a larger version.
Bob, my brother-in-law, and I were in the Double Arch/”Windows” area at Arches National Park. As we made our way down the trail we saw two red lights in the distance. It was our guess it was the red lights on the back of two cameras, glowing in the darkness during long time exposures.
Moon Over Balanced Rock, Arches National Park
In low light conditions there are colors your eyes can’t see, but your camera can capture them if you know what you are doing. That is one of the reasons I take my photography workshops and classes out on field trips at night.
Photo Field Trip, Rocky Mountain National Park. RAW file corrected with ACR.
These are some of the photographers at my photography workshop this past weekend in Rocky Mountain National Park. I processed the original RAW camera file with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) to pull details out of the dark shadows.
Metaphid Jumping Spider
When a rare photo opportunity comes your way, jump on it (pun intended). You have no idea if or when it will happen again.
Images of Colorado. Photo information below. Click to see a larger version.
I am very excited about my nature photography workshop this coming weekend in Estes Park Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park.
Saturday Workshop and Evening Field Trip – Sep 27
The Saturday workshop is a fast paced, fun filled, action packed day, combining intensive classroom explorations with several “go out and shoot” moments to practice the techniques you are learning. The Saturday workshop includes an evening field trip in Rocky Mountain National Park. The Saturday workshop and field trip are limited to 12 participants to allow for plenty of interaction.
OSU Mansfield Nature Photography Workshop
CAPTURING NATURE’S WONDERS
Photography Workshop – OSU – Mansfield Ohio
October 18, 2014 – 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
I am excited. My next nature photography workshop in Ohio is in just four weeks!
Come spend a fun and exciting day learning how to take your nature photography to the next level. You’ll receive “real time” instruction in the field, as well as intensive classroom sessions. In the classroom you will learn the simple steps that make the difference between ordinary snapshots and extraordinary images. Minutes later you will be practicing those steps. You will go home knowing how to create jaw-dropping images!
Civil War Days, Lamoni, Iowa
A Civil War reenactment means catching some of the action. Catching a muzzle flash is ideal. How do you do this? You need the right kind of event, a good shooting location, and the proper technique.
