Nature photography tips and tutorials

3 Tools To Help Prepare You For the Annular Eclipse This Weekend

May 15, 2012 By Steve Berardi 3 Comments

This Sunday, May 20th, there will be an annular solar eclipse, visible from parts of Asia and the western United States. I wrote a detailed post about the eclipse last month, which includes some great links to maps, but I forgot to list some tools to help you scout out a location to photograph this rare event. So, if you’re a procrastinator like me and still haven’t planned out your shot, here are some helpful tools:

#1 – Photographer’s Ephemeris

Photographer's Ephemeris The Photographer’s Ephemeris is an essential tool for any landscape photographer, because it helps show you where the Sun and moon will rise or set, and overlays that on top of a Google map. If you’d like to try and photograph the eclipse as part of a landscape, then this software can help show you where the Sun and moon will be in relation to a particular landscape feature (such as a mountain or lake). There’s a free desktop version, and an inexpensive iPhone/iPad/Android version as well. [Read more...]

How To Reduce Noise In Your Close-Up Photos (using Photoshop)

May 8, 2012 By Steve Berardi 5 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi

In close-up photography, you often use fast shutter speeds to help battle the wind or freeze the action of your subject (such as a butterfly feeding on a flower).

To get these faster shutter speeds without sacrificing your desired depth of field, your only option is to use higher ISOs (making your camera’s sensor more sensitive).

Unfortunately, at these higher ISOs, sometimes you get some really ugly noise in the background.

Well, there just happens to be a great way to reduce this noise in Photoshop. Here’s how: [Read more...]

Biggest Full Moon of the Year Occurs This Saturday

May 1, 2012 By Steve Berardi 6 Comments

Photo by Gregory H. Revera (used under the CC-Attr-SA license)

The biggest full moon of the year will occur this Saturday, May 5th at 11:35 PM EDT. The moon will appear extra large on Saturday, because that’s when it makes its closest approach to Earth (also known as perigee).

With a larger moon in the sky, it’ll be a great opportunity to get some good photographs. The moon will also be about 16% brighter than normal, so you’ll be able to use faster shutter speeds which will help make the photo sharper.

Here are some great articles from around the web to help prepare you for photographing the “super moon” this weekend: [Read more...]

Something That Should Be In Every Camera Bag

April 24, 2012 By Steve Berardi 17 Comments

In previous posts, I’ve talked about helpful accessories for your camera and tripod. But, I always seem to forget one item that almost always gets mentioned in the comments:

A garbage bag.

How could a garbage bag possibly help you with photography? Well, primarily the garbage bag is good for protecting your gear in case it starts raining.

Your camera bag may claim to be “waterproof” (note that water “proof” is different from water “resistant”), or maybe it has a built-in rain cover. But, those rain covers aren’t always big enough to cover your tripod too, so the garbage bag comes in handy when you’re carrying a tripod. [Read more...]

Three Reasons to Avoid Relying on the Crop Tool

April 16, 2012 By Steve Berardi 9 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi

In this age of digital photo editing, it’s tempting to get lazy when you’re taking a photo out in the field and just say to yourself, “well, if I don’t like how I framed this, I could always crop it later.” But, there are a few disadvantages to relying on that crop tool too much: [Read more...]

Get Ready For the Upcoming Annular Eclipse on May 20th

April 10, 2012 By Steve Berardi 2 Comments

Annular Eclipse / Photo by Abel Lopez (used under the CC-Attr 2.0 license)

Next month, on May 20th, there will be an annular solar eclipse, visible from parts of Asia, and the western United States.

An annular solar eclipse is not a “total” eclipse, so the moon will not completely block the Sun. Instead, the Sun will look like a very bright ring (also known as an “annulus”), like in the photo on the right (which was taken during the annular solar eclipse of October 3rd, 2005). [Read more...]