Camera Technique

10 Tips For Top Sharpness

Nature photographers are always on the quest for sharp pictures. I know I am. I want to be sure that when something should be sharp in a photograph, it’s indeed sharp.

Extreme Wildlife

"Normal” isn’t usually a word that describes what high-risk, extreme outdoor photographers’ lives are like.

The GigaScape

Do you often feel that photography is advancing faster than you can buy new cameras and computers? Since the advent of digital imaging, it seems the capabilities and complexities expand faster than we mere mortals can master them.

The Rembrandt Solution

Landscape photographers face a fundamental challenge: how to compress the broad range of light intensities typically found in the real world into the much narrower range of tones that can be reproduced in a print.

Get 4x5 Quality With A DSLR

For almost 20 years as a professional photographer, I’ve shot with large- and medium-format film cameras. Then, five years ago, I purchased my first digital camera, a Canon EOS-1Ds, and gave up film altogether.

Set Up Your Camera For Best Field Use

Have you set up your camera to make it work optimally for you? Have you changed the camera from its default settings? Most photographers make the RAW or JPEG (or both) choice, but since they’re used to film cameras, many don’t realize that there are...

Be A Photography Rebel

In the age of inexpensive, high-quality digital cameras, suddenly everyone is a photographer. The digital revolution has unleashed a horde of shooters, all vying to become the next Ansel Adams. As a result, it gets tougher and tougher to stand out...

Power Cloning

Photoshop provides many tools for cloning, the process of cleaning up small imperfections before printing. Dust on the sensor, contrails in the sky, twigs protruding into the frame or a cigarette butt in the scene are examples of things a photographer...

Southwestern Safaris

So a wildlife photo safari to Africa or the Pantanal isn’t in your budget. Don’t put away your camera! Several ranches with spectacular wildlife diversity and facilities for photographers await in the Texas Hill Country, the Rio Grande Valley and the...

Legacy: Think Like Ansel Adams Today

The legacy of Ansel Adams is a driving creative force that motivates every outdoor photographer. Through his treks to Yosemite Valley and other American landscapes, Adams almost single-handedly created modern nature photography. We know many readers...

Shoot More, Process Less

In this age of digital cameras, super-computers and image-editing software that requires a PhD to master, it’s all too easy to spend hours under the soft glow of a computer screen endlessly fine-tuning your images. I call it the “postproduction suc...

Be The King In The Rookery

Walking past the very alive and very smelly alligators I can hear what sounds like a million voices all talking in the distance. As I round the corner in the predawn light, I can make out, at first, some dark shapes. Walking further, it appears as if...

Sharp Is King

In the quest for high-quality digital capture in the uncontrolled setting of the outdoors, we’re always seeking ways to overcome ambient conditions that pose obstacles to our photographic vision.

10 Tips For Better Autofocus

It’s easy to take autofocus for granted. I know, I do. This technology is amazing—your camera has to figure out what should be sharp in a scene, focus the lens and take the picture, all in a fraction of a second.

Setting The Background

Minimalism has been a trend in nature photography that has spread from the point of capture all the way to the fine-art print, often resulting in photos with the “less is more” technique.

Quality Of Light

Family and friends have to get used to a photographer’s definition of good shooting conditions. They’ll ask, “How’s the weather out?”, whereas a photographer will ask, “How’s the light?” One of the key components of any photograph—whether you’re working...

Digital Exposure Tips From The Pros

Mastering exposure is every bit as important for a digital shooter as it is for a film photographer. Routine technical choices about metering, lens aperture and shutter speed remain the basic ingredients for a well-executed photograph. But what if...

Keeping Your Camera Steady

Anyone who has attended a George Lepp seminar knows that tripods are a favorite subject! And in the age of digital, where multiple composited images solve problems such as excessive contrast and limited depth of field, a tripod is a must.

Panoramas: Getting The Big Picture

What is a panorama, and why would you create one? Although panos have been around for a long time, advances in tripod heads and software have made creating excellent panoramas much easier. How do you know when you have a panoramic opportunity?

Dust & Snow: Shooting In Extreme Conditions

The wind is howling—not sure of the speed exactly, but the weather report suggested gusts of 30 mph or more with a wind chill in the area of -50º F. Wind chill is an understatement when the ambient temperature is already -30º F. The word “chill” seems a...

Where The Spot Meets The Pixel

Although you may hear the phrase "I’ll fix it in Photoshop" come from the lips of a digital photographer, correcting mistakes is more time-consuming than getting it right in-camera. This is no truer when it comes to exposure, where poor metering r...

Warm Light, Cold Light

Photographer David Stoecklein is well known as a master photographer of the American West, but if you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s just a hunter of light. And for this cowboy photographer, even though so many photographers speak in these terms, the...