HOW–TO

10 Tips For The Lowdown On Nature

1 Use a close-focusing wide-angle lens. Compact digital cameras will focus up close naturally with a wide-angle. This prickly pear cactus and grasshopper near Moab, Utah, (see page 1)was photographed with a full-frame fish-eye lens on the Olympus EVOLT E-330.

2 Get down low enough to get into that environment. The more dramatic shots come when the background is recognizable as a real environment for your subject. This puts you and your photograph into nature. This Great Smokies centipede (see page 2) was a challenging shot for its surprising speed.

3 Try shallow depth of field. Sometimes a shallow depth of field from a large aperture is more effective in showing off your subject, like in this shot of a moss hummock in Acadia National Park, Maine.

4 A digital camera with a tilting or swivel live LCD lets you get low-angle shots more easily than any other way, as seen in this Olympus EVOLT E-330 D-SLR.

5 Try deep depth of field. I love the deep depth of field you get with a wide-angle and a small aperture when shooting up close. This field of owl’s clover goes on forever and has sharpness from close to far.

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