Tips & Techniques

I can’t tell you how many messed up, utterly chaotic, Lightroom catalogs I’ve seen as an Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop Instructor; lost images, lost drives, collections substituting for folders, duplicate images, triplicate images, Photoshop files sent off into the ether and photographers on the verge of suicide. If you got a mess on your hands…

As a rule, I recoil from anything described as “auto,” any promise of instant gratification and the term ‘pleasing image’, which Adobe uses in their description of their new AUTO workflow button, seems ‘snap shotty.’ Well, forget all of that because Lightroom’s new AUTO command is impressive, a feature that you can use with a high degree of confidence in many image situations.

During our National Park Photography Master Class and First Horizons workshops, we are often using filters for photography- specifically neutral density (ND) filters. To be clear, these are full neutral density filters, not gradients which are sometimes used to darken landscape skies.

Creating a powerful, meaningful, and innovative landscape photography composition is a visual challenge for all of us.

For many of us, Creative Landscape Photography Composition is not an intuitive skill. It is something that I work at each time I go to the field such as on this rare windless morning in Mojave National Preserve.

Landscape Photography Composition: The Sky Dominant ImageI know as a photographer and as an art photography teacher that the biggest cause of poor landscape image failure is poor composition; compositions without visual cues, voice or purpose.

Microwaving Your Images? Probably Not a Good Idea!   The landscape photography student sat upright on the rock with an unbending grace; his palms placed softly on his knees— his posture indicating a detachment from the beauty of the land and light that surrounded us. His stillness seemed to suggest a contempt for the field…

One of the hottest meteor showers ever will streak across the skies on August 11/12. Prepare yourself with these tips on how to capture the best images.