Without bright sunshine, many outdoor photos seem a little lackluster. This is because there is a lack of contrast in the scene, which means that the tones captured in the image (primarily mid-tones) fit into a narrow range. This can be seen in the histogram, where you will usually see a bell shaped curve lacking either blacks or whites or both. Without rich blacks and bright whites, images are always going to appear a little dull. To get this type of image to really "pop", you need to do two things: make a proper exposure and then add contrast in post-processing. Fortunately, both are fairly simple tasks.

Images like this one of Mount Washington in New Hampshire have plenty of color, but look dull straight out of the camera due to a lack of contrast. For this version of the image, I added blacks in Lightroom.

When shooting a scene with low contrast, be sure to expose it so that your mid-tones are exposed as mid-tones, or up to a stop brighter. Sounds obvious, and it is, but if you underexpose your mid-tones you will have a hard time getting them to look right without introducing noise. After exposing your scene, check the histogram and adjust your exposure as necessary to get the peak of the bell curve to be in the middle or slightly to the right. It will still look dull, but we'll fix that in post.

There are many ways to add contrast to an image in post-production, but probably the worst way is to just use the contrast slider in Camera Raw/Lightroom or the Brightness/Contrast adjustment in Photoshop. There are several techniques that are more nuanced, which I'll describe here. Some I've detailed in previous posts, but hey, I figure half of you reading this post weren't paying attention last year when this blog was brand new.

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Last week I attended the 16th annual Nature Photography Summit, hosted by the North American Nature Photography Association in Reno. This was the tenth summit I’ve attended and I continue to find great benefits from attending. The summits are a mix of skills building breakout sessions, portfolio reviews, an industry trade show, and beautiful keynote presentations by some of the world’s best nature and conservation photographers. Every year I pick up some great new skills from the breakouts. The highlights of the skills sessions for me this year were Kevin Adams’ in-depth treatise on night photography, and Ian Shive’s and Rob Sheppard’s discussion on the emerging world of shooting video with DSLR’s. As great as the breakouts are, I find that the biggest reward from attending the summit for me is making connections and finding inspiration. This event is a great way to begin the year full of excitement and wonder and the energy to formulate my own projects for the coming 12 months.

I can honestly say that I probably would not have been able to take the leap to being a full-time photographer nine years ago if I had not attended several NANPA summits and made connections with other professionals in the industry. While I have made a few sales as a direct result of showing my work at the summit, a much bigger boon to my career has been meeting and learning from both photo editors and other photographers who have become friends over the years. At my first few NANPA summits, I learned simple things about how to present my work and how to talk to editors that were a huge help in becoming a professional. Most of these tips did not come from actual breakout sessions, but from incidental conversations and the phone calls and e-mails that followed. Now I find that by just asking around in between breakout sessions, I can pretty much find out anything I need to know, whether it is the specifics of a Photoshop technique, a question about a piece of gear, or feedback on marketing ideas I have. As a group, photographers seem to be generous with their time and knowledge, and whether you are a beginner photographer or seasoned pro, networking at an event like NANPA can pay big dividends down the road.

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As I plan for my upcoming trip to Reno next week for the North American Nature Photography Association's (NANPA) Annual Summit, I'm inspired to talk about how we as photographers improve our craft. Books and tutorials are great ways to learn about photography, but to truly excel as photographers we need to get our work out there in front of people and get some feedback. This is why many new photographers, especially nature photographers, have traditionally gravitated to camera clubs and more recently, to photo sharing sites like Flickr and user forums like those on Naturescapes.net. These are great places to have your work critiqued by peers, and you can quickly find out if your skills are up to snuff, or if new ideas you are trying are translating well. Photography classes and workshops that feature critique sessions are a good option as well for those willing to invest a little more effort and money.

I am a big fan of portfolio review events where you pay a fee (usually $50.00 and up) to meet with a picture professional for 20 or 30 minutes. These can be magazine photo editors, photo reps, fine art gallery owners, stock agents, etc. - the top professionals in the world of photography. Most events let you choose who you meet with ahead of time, so you can tailor your portfolio to your reviewer. That way, if you are looking for gallery representation, you can create a portfolio of maybe twenty large fine art prints. On the other hand, if you are looking for stock representation, you might bring a laptop with 100 or so of your best low-res files with stock potential. The NANPA Summit has a great portfolio review event that I have participated in for years, learning many lessons and meeting editors that are now friends and clients. Even though I have been a full-time photographer for about 10 years now, I still go to at least one portfolio review event every year. The feedback is invaluable and the cost is minimal compared to how much money I spend on other marketing efforts.

Of course, asking for feedback means you might hear some things you don't want to hear. That's o.k. if you go in with a non-defensive attitude and the desire to learn. Most reviewers find nice things to say to everybody. As an artist, those words feel good, but may be less important than the criticism you hear. I once had a reviewer tell me my images were as strong as Art Wolfe's (not sure what was in that reviewer's coffee that day!), which gave me a big ego for a day or two, but in the end did less to further my career than the reviewers who made suggestions that helped me edit my work more tightly, or present it in ways that were more professional.

Here's a listing of some of the best portfolio review events in the U.S.:
NANPA Annual Summit, February 16 -19, 2010 in Reno, NV: napa.org

FotoFest 2010, March 12 - April 1 in Houston, Texas: fotofest.org: biennial 2010

FOTOWEEK DC, usually in the fall: fotoweekdc.org

Center's Review LA, January: visitcenter.org: programs.cfm LA

Center's Review Santa Fe, June 3-6, 2010: visitcenter.org: programs

Palm Springs Photo Festival, March 28 - April 2, 2010: 2010.palmspringsphotofestival.com

Griffin Museum of Photography, May 7 and 8, 2010: griffinmuseum.org

Photo Nola, New Orleans, LA, usually in December: photonola.org

If you know of additional events with portfolio reviews, please list them in the comments. Thanks!

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The owl has nothing to do with my post this week, but I thought I’d show it because this little guy is a good reminder that winter can be a great time for wildlife photography because you can often find species in your area that are not normally around. It seems that in my neck of the woods (coastal New Hampshire,) there is often a cooperative owl that migrates down from northern climes to entertain photographers. Last year, it was a great grey owl. This year it’s this screech owl who has been sitting in a tree adjacent to Route 1A in Rye, New Hampshire for about a month. Check local birding hotlines and listserves for potential opportunities in your area.

Now for this week’s official post, I’ve put together five Lightroom tips that should help speed up your workflow on a daily basis:

1) Keyword Sets. In my recent post, New Year's (Workflow) Resolutions (outdoorphotographer.com: community/blogs,) I discussed the virtues of keywording your images in order to better organize your image catalog. The Library module in Lightroom, makes it easy to add keywords by using the Keywording and Keyword List panels. You can type keywords right in the “Keyword Tags” box, or in the “Click here to add keywords” box. If there are certain words you use on a regular basis, consider creating keyword sets that contain these terms. You’ll see the Keyword Set box at the bottom of the Keywording panel. You can add a keyword to an image from a keyword set by just clicking on the term. When you select multiple images in Grid view, clicking on a keyword adds it to all the selected images. Lightroom comes with a few sets installed – Outdoor Photography, Wedding Photography, Portrait Photography – but to harness the power of this feature, you need to create your own sets. For example, I’ve created a keyword set named Northeast States, which is a set of the most common states I shoot in. No more trying to type Massachusetts correctly! To create a set, click on the arrows next to the current keyword set name and choose Edit Set. You can toggle through your keyword sets by typing Alt-0. Also, when you hold down the Alt key, you will notice that a number appears next to each keyword in your current keyword set. Type Alt+ the number to add that keyword to your currently selected image(s.)

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Selling prints of my work has always been more of a side business during my career, as I focused primarily on producing imagery that was used in print or on-line venues, and most of the prints I do sell are in the small to medium size range: 8” x 10” to 12” x 18”. However, during the last couple of years I have been selling more big prints as I have started exhibiting my work more frequently. These bigger prints have caused me to re-think my sharpening techniques in Photoshop (see my previous post, Sharpening Basics, outdoorphotographer.com: community/blogs.

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We photographers all love to shoot whenever we get a chance, and I think most of us love to play around with making our pictures look great, either in the darkroom or in Photoshop. We'll spend hours learning how a camera trap system works or how to apply layer masks in Photoshop. What we all hate however, is spending the time to develop a proper workflow. It's tedious and takes a different kind of critical thinking than the creative thinking we like to do with our photography. However, a proper workflow can improve our efficiency at processing thousands of images and insure that our images won't get lost in a digital disaster. In the spirit of the coming New Year, I offer these workflow resolutions to get us all on track for a better digital photography world.

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I’ve had a lot of fun over the last 6 months writing “In The Zone” and I would like to say thank you to all of you that have been reading my posts. I also want to wish you all a joyous holiday season and a 2010 full of peace, prosperity, and great light!

‘Tis the season for lists, and while browsing my local independent bookstore, I came up with one that features some great books for learning about the great photographers of our time and decades past. My inspiration for compiling this list was a presentation I watched by Robert Glenn Ketchum a few years ago. In his talk, Robert explained in great detail, the history of conservation photography, from 19th century photographers of the American West to contemporary fine art photographers like Richard Misrach. He also opined that to be a great photographer, it is necessary to know the history of the art form. It was a great presentation and it made me realize how little I know about the history of photography. This list features books that together provide a great education of the history of cameras, photography, and photographers.

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Cold weather has settled in for many of us in North America, which means that intrepid outdoor photographers will be inspired to venture out into the cold to capture snowy landscape scenes and explore nature in its most extreme conditions. These conditions require that special considerations be made to protect both your gear and your body.

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If you are a regular reader of Outdoor Photographer, you hopefully have noticed that almost every issue features a photographer working on a project meant to further conservation of wildlife and wilderness. Photographers have been using their photos to protect the environment since the 19th century and in the 21st century, conservation photography can rightly be called a movement that has considerable momentum. A large percentage of my photography over the last 15 years has focused on conservation projects in New England, and I feel that is a moral duty for us nature photographers to dedicate a portion of our time and resources to protecting the very places that we shoot.

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Not all Photoshop tips need a whole blog post to explain, so I’ve decided to put together five quick and very useful (and totally unrelated) tips in one breezy article today. Enjoy.

1) Load Images into Stack in Photoshop. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a technique for creating a split neutral density filter effect using two different exposures of the same scene and combining the images in Photoshop (you can see than post here: www.outdoorphotographer.com) In that post, I suggest opening two different image files, then copying one file on top of the other so that both images are in one document in separate layers. There’s an even easier way to do that by using the Photoshop Script: Load Images into Stack (found under the File—Scripts menu.)

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