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Take the best photos this fall with the fall foliage prediction map for 2022

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The moment September came, my hometown entered the full-blown autumn mode. It’s been raining for two days now and the temperature suddenly dropped from the tropical 40 to the maximum of 18°C. But you know what it means? The sun will shine again, Indian summer will come, and the surroundings will be colored in the wonderful, warm tones of falling leaves.

Portrait, wedding, and landscape photographers particularly like this time of the year. And to make your planning easier and your photo shoot perfectly timed, SmokyMountains.com’s fall foliage prediction map for 2022 is here.

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Improve your landscape images tenfold by using these storytelling tips

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“If you focus on this instead of getting the latest and the greatest camera gear,” says Mike Smith, “you will get so much better than you could have ever imagined.” By ‘this’, he means storytelling. It’s an elusive but valuable skill and one that any photographer benefits from. It’s the difference between a nice image and a compelling image.

But it’s not easy. Including any kind of narrative in a still image is hard. It takes practice. “Sometimes I get it and other times I completely miss the mark,” says Mike. In this excellent video, Mike walks us (literally!) through his ideas on how to tell better stories through your photographs.

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Photographer captures breathtaking canyons with a 150 MP Phase One IQ4 and a helicopter

I find canyons and gorges to be among the most breathtaking places to visit and photograph. They’re as beautiful from a viewpoint as they are from air, and photographer Mitch Rouse sure proves it in his stunning aerial images.

While drones are easily available today, Mitch chooses a more complex, and I’d say braver method for taking his aerial shots. Pairing a Phase One IQ4 with his passion for photography and flying, he takes mesmerizing photos from up high. The series we chose shows the incredible beauty of canyons, and Mitch kindly shared the photos and some details with DIYP readers.[Read More…]

Photographer combines luck and skill in this incredible double rainbow and lightning shot

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Most of you knows photographer Jason Rinehart for his light painting work. While he’s passionate about creating art with lights and long exposure, he is equally crazy about capturing nature’s natural light work: thunderstorms.

While scrolling through Facebook recently, I stumbled upon a perfect example of Jason’s passion I didn’t know so much about. He captured a lightning strike under a rainbow, which is not something you see every day. Add another rainbow into the equation and you get a once-in-a-lifetime shot. I wanted to learn more about this incredible photo, and Jason kindly shared some details with DIYP.

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How to create dynamic landscape compositions without leading lines

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Are you a rule follower or a rule breaker? The rebel in me usually likes to bend the rules as much as possible, and the rules of photography and composition are no exception. It’s true that they exist for a reason, and often by following them, at least in the early phases of learning, we will get much better results.

However, following rules all the time when creating art can quickly get boring. In this video landscape photographer, Brendan van Son shows us some ideas for creating dynamic images without using leading lines.

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7 tips for shooting sharper landscape photographs

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No matter what genere we shoot, photographers always seem to be on a quest for sharper images. No matter how sharp they may already be, we’re always trying to squeeze just a little more sharpness performance out of our cameras and lenses. There are a few things we can do though, particularly for landscape photographers, that don’t involve going out and buying more expensive lenses.

In this video, landscape photographer Mike Smith walks us through seven of his top tips for getting sharper images when shooting landscapes. Some of them you may already know and apply to your own photography, but there are probably at least one or two that you might not have tried.

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Create a fine art HDR sea scape from start to finish

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Piers and jetties make wonderful subjects for long-exposure photography. It’s something about the lines leading you through the image and the perspective, combined with the poetic nature of an open body of water. But they aren’t always easy to shoot correctly, and sometimes you’ll need to shoot multiple exposures to get the result just right.

In this video, Gary Gough walks us through a shoot in Hartlepool, UK of the dilapidated skeleton of an old pier. He shows us how he shoots it and then edits it to create a beautiful fine art HDR seascape.

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The story behind how this amazing photograph of the “Fairy Tree” Milky Way was created

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Sometimes, you’re sitting on social media, scrolling away and something stops you in your tracks and you just can’t help but sit and stare. That was the case for me with this Milky Way photograph from landscape and commercial photographer Mark Duffy. DIYP reached out to Mark to find out more about it and how it was created.

Mark says that the tree at the centre of this image is known as a Fairy Tree in Ireland. That’s what they call a tree that stands alone in the middle of a field. It’s believed that they bring luck and possess mystical powers. This one though, Mark tells DIYP, is particularly special. He says it’s over 200 years old and perched on top of a 3,000-year-old cairn (an Irish burial tomb) overlooking his hometown of Dundalk and the Cooley Mountains.

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The Atoll is a unique take on the traditional tripod lens collar for easy vertical shooting for stills and video

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At first, the Atoll might seem like just a regular tripod collar, the kind that many of us have used with our lenses for years – at least telephoto lenses. But Atoll comes with a bit of a twist (no pun intended) that allows you to get that lens collar functionality with lenses that weren’t actually designed to have a collar attached.

It’s essentially two mounting plates in one – one that goes on top of your tripod head and one that mounts underneath your camera – connected via a rotating ring that goes around your lens and allows you to easily rotate it without having to deal with the inherent issues of ball heads and blocking cable connections. It’s been launched through Kickstarter where it’s already hammered its goal multiple times over.

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Landscape photography is for everyone, no matter what your mobility

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Are you ever intimidated by those strapping young Insta-photographers that seem to travel the world climbing mountain after mountain? They seem to exist purely to seek out the most inhospitable environments to feed their impressive portfolios. Are you thinking that you can’t be a landscape photographer if you’re not able to do serious days of wilderness treks or at least get in some formidable day hikes to out-of-the-way locales?

Whether you’re unable or unwilling to walk a long way, it doesn’t matter and you shouldn’t let that get in the way of a good landscape photo opportunity. Some of Ansel Adam’s most famous photographs were actually taken just a stone’s throw from the road. With that in mind, in this video photographer, Mike Smith gives you some tips to capture stunning landscapes without having to exert yourself.

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