After a few weeks of travel, the three of us — Nasim, John Bosley, and I — have made it back from our landscape photography road trip through the Western United States. From the Rocky Mountains to the Cascades, we visited some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes, and we captured some footage that we are very excited to add to our upcoming landscape photography video course. We’ve already written about our sunset and nighttime photography in the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone’s dramatic hot springs,…
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Happy 100th Birthday to the US National Park Service!
In the past month, I have visited more National Parks than in any other time of my life. I have seen some of the most beautiful places in the world under incredible conditions, and I managed to take photos of landscapes that I had heard of since I was a young child. That’s why I am happy to say that today, August 25th, marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service in the United States.
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What Is Dual-Pixel RAW in the Canon 5D Mark IV?
Canon’s newest 5D Mark IV camera has a lot of exciting specifications — the fast frame rate and 4K video capabilities, for example — but there is more to this camera than what first meets the eye. One new feature buried in Canon’s promotional material is a technology called Dual Pixel RAW. This isn’t something that we have seen before, but it seems like it could be one of the most interesting features of this new camera. So, what is Dual-Pixel…
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On the Road: Exploring Glacier National Park
The past few days filming our landscape photography video have been fun and exhausting, and we’ve seen some wonderful sights along the way. After leaving Yellowstone National Park, we headed north to film some mountains and snow. For our next stop, we spent about a week in and around Glacier National Park. Although we missed the peak wildflower season in Glacier by a few weeks, the park was still absolutely beautiful — and very nice for photography.
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How Was This Picture Made #10: The Answer
We had a lot of good guesses on our tenth “How Was This Picture Made” article, including a couple that were almost entirely spot-on. Congratulations to Photography Life reader Goh Wei Jun for his guess — he will receive a copy of our upcoming eBook, Creative Landscape Photography, as a prize. So, how was this photograph made? This article dives into the entire process.
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On the Road: Traveling Through Yellowstone
Our landscape photography tutorial has taken us from Colorado to Wyoming to Montana, and we have filmed in some amazing locations along the way. Cell coverage is hard to find in this area of the country, but there is no shortage of beautiful landscapes to photograph. After packing up and heading out of Grand Teton National Park, we took a short detour through Yellowstone on the way to Montana. This was the first visit for both John and I, and…
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On the Road: Milky Way and Sunrise Photography
After almost a week of filming, we just packed up and left Grand Teton National Park. We were very lucky to capture some great light, and we had a few clear nights to take good Milky Way photos as well. We’re now heading to Yellowstone for some photos — hopefully avoiding the crazy tourists — and then going north to film some videos throughout Montana.
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On the Road: Arriving in Grand Tetons National Park
A couple days ago, John Bosley and I flew out to Colorado to meet up with Nasim. We’re in the first stages of another exciting video for Photography Life: an advanced landscape photography tutorial. We’ve had this particular project in mind for a while, and it feels great to start putting our plans into action. After landing in Denver, the three of us stopped for some food and camping supplies, and then we hit the road to Grand Teton National…
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A Rainbow and a Waterfall at Sunrise: The Making of a Photograph
After a week in Ireland, I have seen some incredible sights. This is a beautiful country, and the people are incredibly warm and welcoming. Although most days here have been rainy, I’ve tried to make the most of foggy landscapes and simply enjoy my time in such a unique place. However, the weather has made it difficult to take colorful sunrise and sunset photos, which is a bit unfortunate — it is no secret that golden hour is a wonderful time to take pictures. Still, there has been…
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Dangerous Photographers at the Cliffs of Moher
I arrived in Ireland a couple days ago, and I have been taking plenty of photos along the way. I’ll post them in future articles, but there is something more important to discuss for now: the dangerous, idiotic behavior I saw at the Cliffs of Moher.
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How Was This Picture Made #10?
This is the tenth post in our “How Was This Picture Taken” series, and this one features a photograph I took at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. Since this is the tenth installment in our series, and because we have a number of exciting projects coming up, we’d like to do something a bit special this time:
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A Look Back at the Intimate, Otherworldly Photography of Fan Ho
I am sad to say that the world of photography lost one of its true masters this past Sunday. Chinese photographer Fan Ho, known for his intimate street photographs of 1950’s Hong Kong, died of pneumonia at the age of 84. His photographs are more than simply beautiful; they show an understanding of light and composition is truly unparalleled. I cannot write anything that does justice to work like this, so I will leave with one of Fan Ho’s quotes…
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Introducing Composition in Photography
Few topics in photography are as important – and as personal – as the composition that you choose. Composition has the power to convey exactly what you want to say with a photograph, guiding a viewer’s eye seamlessly across the frame. It has been called, with good reason, the strongest way of seeing. This article revisits some previous Photography Life articles on composition, covering the most important elements and discussing how they relate to one another.
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Seeing Your Photos with a New Eye
The more you edit a particular photo, the more likely your eye is to grow weary of the changes that you make. Personally, after spending a few hours editing a single image, I begin to lose my ability to tell a good edit from a bad one – presenting a clear problem for making more edits. To some degree, this is even true after a two- or three-hour break; the photo is still too familiar to see with a fresh eye. In this quick…
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Image Blending: The Landscape Photography Revolution
The transition from film to digital was one of the most dramatic shifts in the history of photography, and countless new techniques arose along the way. Everything from exposing to the right to the ability to review photos on-the-fly dramatically changed the photographic world. Of all these changes, though, one has transformed landscape photography far more than any other: the advent of digital image blending.
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How to Choose the Right Lens Set
There are very few decisions in photography more personal than picking a set of lenses to use. With the incredible number of options available – no matter which brand of camera you use – it can seem impossible to find the right lenses for your needs. Personally, I have switched out my entire lens kit at least four times in the past four years, and many photographers have done so even more often than that! There are no perfect answers…
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Chasing the Light
More than any other fundamental aspect of photography, light is at the heart of every image you take. Without light, photography cannot exist; it is the foundation of every image, giving shape and meaning to each scene in your viewfinder. Personally, as a landscape photographer, my photographic decisions are shaped more than anything else by the lighting conditions that I encounter. From a soft mist to a dramatic sunset, whether at a mountain or a desert valley, my preferred approach…
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Photoshop Layers and Layer Masking for Beginners
Arguably the most versatile adjustments in Photoshop are the layering and masking tools. Together, layers and masks make up a large portion of the work most photographers do in Photoshop, both for subtle and complex edits. However, if you are just beginning to work in Photoshop, these two irreplaceable tools may not be completely intuitive. In this article, I will cover the basics of using layers in Photoshop and discuss layer masking – laying the groundwork for far more advanced…
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Advanced Post-Processing Tips: Three-Step Sharpening
Sharpening remains a particularly confusing topic among photographers, especially given the tremendous number of post-processing options available. Some post-processing software has so many options that it is hard to know where to start; others do not let you use optimal methods in the first place. If you are trying to use the best sharpening settings – including the lowest possible levels of noise and other artifacts – the ideal method is three-step sharpening.
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Is The Orton Effect Taking Over Landscape Photography?
Have you heard of the Orton Effect? This post-processing technique has been around since the 1980s, if not earlier, but the trend has exploded tremendously in the past few years. If you haven’t heard of it, you aren’t alone – it only recently began to gain mainstream popularity. And yet, in some ways, the Orton Effect is swallowing the modern world of landscape photography. This is barely an exaggeration; after seeing the Orton Effect in practice, you should be able to spot…
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