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 one of your camera’s automatic 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. So what do you do?
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.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park
In addition to all of the usual photographic challenges, winter provides some extra complications, especially in terms of metering. So I began my series of articles on winter photography. I am in the process of revising and updating this series. I am also revising some related articles and adding new ones. Check out the links below. The articles will help you meet the unique challenges of winter photography. So get out there, have fun, and create some great winter images!
A pet saddleback tamarin hangs on to Yoina Mameria Nontsotega as the Matsigenka girl takes a dip in the Yomibato River, deep inside Peru’s ManuÌ National Park. Photo by Charlie Hamilton James.
Out of 2,290,225 photographs by 91 photographers, National Geographic picked the 52 best images of the year.
Looking for an extra special gift for a photographer? Sign them for a total immersion nature photography workshop in Ohio, Michigan, or Colorado in 2017. Workshops are one day to four days in length and cost $90 to $400. Send no money now. This is a no risk gift.
Lela Rae, Columbus Ohio. December 13, 2007
Lela Rae is a stunning model to work with so it was a special treat for her to make the drive from Detroit to Ohio of us to spend some time working together.
Snowy Owl Looking for Prey
One of the great things about winter is the return of the Snowy Owls. They are now back in the far northern U.S.
Super Moon, November 13, 2016
November 13-14, 2016 is a Super Moon. For many people this is the biggest super moon in their lifetime. Go out and look Sunday night, early Monday morning (before moonset), or Monday night.
Aspen Grove, Rocky Mountain National Park. (No sun flare.)
There are times when you shoot in the direction of the sun that direct rays from the sun enter your lens even though the sun isn’t in the photo. Whenever this happens you have the possibility of sun flare. The sunlight bouncing around inside your lens can create ghost shapes, add a light haze to the image, and rob the photo of color.
Dawn, scenic overlook. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Exposure for the sky.
In a single exposure your camera can’t capture everything your eyes see in high contrast situations with a wide range of tonalities. HDR photography gives you more options.
Update, November 18, 2017: An updated version of this article is posted here.
The clouds were rolling in and the sun dropped behind the mountains when my photography workshop stopped in a parking lot just above “Fern Curve” in Rocky Mountain National Park. Mother nature didn’t provide a sunset so we were on Plan B and then Plan C. It was starting to get dark when we began taking photos. As it gets darker there are some interesting color shifts I wanted the workshop participants to see and photograph.
Bull elk, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Autumn, Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Fall color is sweeping the country. To make the most of it, you want to be at the right place at the right time. With some help from the internet, I will help you find the best fall color locations at the peak of the season.
Mt. Sneffels and the Sneffels Range from County Road 7 (East Dallas Creek), Colorado. October 3, 2014.
Welcome to my Colorado fall color travel guide with 104 photos and 17 maps. I cover some of the best known fall color locations in Colorado, and one real gem of a road that is mostly unknown to photographers and leaf peepers. Spend anywhere from a weekend to three weeks exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
This article is updated and re-posted every year. To find the most recent version, go to the Favorites/Most Popular page and look for the name of this article.
Come spend a fun and exciting weekend learning how to take your nature photography to the next level. It is September 23-25 in beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park. There are only a few openings left. Now is the time to sign up.
Tiana Hunter
If you are out hiking and a beautiful woman asks you to take her picture, you should probably says yes!
I walked out the door after church Sunday and was greeted by perfect portrait light thanks to a big cloud over the sun. I love spontaneous shoots and I have been shooting this young woman since she was three years old (along with the rest of her family).
Today is National Lighthouse Day. In this photo the planets Venus and Jupiter are in the sky over the lighthouse “Big Red†and the Holland breakwater light, Holland State Park, Michigan.
Kristina
I spent a happy day yesterday working with Kristina, an actress/model from L.A. It was very much a last minute thing for both of us. We have been working together since 2012 when she was in college.
Snowy Egret Feeding
Some days are “so so”, some days are average, and some days are amazing. This is not the best time of year to photograph birds at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, but July 14 was amazing. This photo of a feeding Snowy Egret was just one of many fine images from the morning. He stabbed at his prey and it came out of the water but not in his beak.
The view across the wildlife refuge looking west at the Dumbarton Bridge.
Located on the east side of San Francisco Bay near Fremont, California, the Don Edwards San Fransisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge is one of my favorite places to go when I am in the Bay Area.
Images from Denali, Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Parks.
The National Park Service turns 100 this year. Go out and celebrate by going to one of our national parks. Take your camera and create images at some of the most spectacular locations in North America.
Come spend a fun and exciting weekend on Gibraltar Island learning how to take your nature photography to the next level. August 19-21, 2016. Intensive exploration sessions are combined with “use your camera” photo exercises and “go out and do it” field trips to give you the ideal photographic experience.
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Washington D.C.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Washington D.C. Click for a larger version.
Richard Duane Klug (the name just above the rose) was born January 26, 1946. He died in Darlac Province, Vietnam, November 14, 1967 at the age of 21. He is one of over 58,000 American soldiers that died in Vietnam, and one of over 1.1 million American soldiers that have died in all American wars (almost half of them in the Civil War). It is with a profound sense of gratitude that I reflect on the lives of those who “gave the last full measure of devotion” on behalf of their country.
My concept was to photograph a young woman in a stream with reflections of her and the trees in the ripples of the water. I had just the right stream in mind and at this time of year there was just enough water. This isn’t the pose I originally had in mind. More about that later.
This tutorial will guide you through the basic color selection tools in Photoshop. Other kinds of image editing software will have a different layout, but similar tools. Before you go through this tutorial, read Learning Photoshop Colors – A Color Picker Tutorial. It covers some Photoshop color information that is basic to understanding this tutorial.
Vermilion Lakes Sunset, new and old ACR “process versions”. Click on the photo to see a larger image.
Adobe has a new “process version” for Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). This means better image processing for your RAW camera files.