Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
How far would you travel to capture the perfect lightning bolt? For some photographers, that answer is “pretty far”. This excellent short documentary released by ABC Australia shows the lengths some storm-chasing photographers are prepared to go to. And it’s fascinating.
Jordan Cantelo is one such storm chaser who travels thousands of miles across the Australian continent. His main directive is to capture that elusive lightning bolt.
The International Landscape Photographer of the Year has announced its 2022 winners. Like every year, the photos show the magic and beauty of the world: underwater and on land, up in the mountains and down in the plains. And if you, dear reader, love landscape photography as I do – here is a real treat for both of us.
The real world, especially the natural real world, is filled with wonderful sights for us to capture with our cameras. The problem is, our cameras rarely capture the world exactly as we see it and particularly not how we feel it to be. That’s where editing comes in. It’s why we have tools like Lightroom and Photoshop to help us get our images where we want them to be. In the case of woodlands, that often means a dreamy painterly style.
Woodlands, particularly, are well suited to this style. It brings out those magical and mystical vibes many of us feel when we think of woodlands and the idyllic images we see in our heads. In this video, Nigel Danson walks us through his editing process in Lightroom Classic to give his woodland photos that soft and dreamy painterly feel. But this isn’t just a basic 5-minute tutorial. It’s almost half an hour long going into a lot of detail on the whole process.
USA-based landscape and nature photographer Brent Clark has won the 2022 Natural Landscape Photography
Awards. His images of sweeping sands and autumn forests wowed judges with their slightly abstract feel and cohesive umber color palette.
The award is the very first international photography competition of its kind. Now in its second year, the competition was created to promote the very best landscape photography by digital and film photographers who value realism and
authenticity in their work. The competition established a set of important rules to avoid the excessive digital
editing techniques that have become commonplace in landscape photography. Here are the rest of the winning images.
It’s not unusual in landscape photography to put a lot of effort into the process of taking photographs, only to come home later and be disappointed when you download your images. You’ve probably researched your location in advance, got up before dawn, and hiked in the dark. You’ve reached your destination and now you’re just waiting for that golden light to hit your subject.
Doing all of these things will of course increase your chances of creating compelling images. However, there is still no guarantee. In this video, landscape photographer Mark Denney walks us through his thought process during an early morning landscape shoot and shares his best tip to improve your luck.
The stunning ‘Brecon in Winter’ by Will Davies was chosen by the judges as the overall winner of the 2022 Landscape Photographer of the Year award. The stunning image shows the view towards the west of the Brecon Beacons in Wales from the Pen y Crug hill fort.
“I love this area in winter,” Will says, “the mountains somehow feel and look grander and wilder in the snow. The weather was not looking promising as I hiked up in the dark,” he explains, “but luckily the sun broke through right at sunrise, just long enough to get this shot.”
[Read More…]
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.
“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.
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…]
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.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!