PhotoNaturalist

Why You Should Calibrate Your Monitor

April 2, 2013 By Steve Berardi 4 Comments

Have you ever tried ordering prints of your digital photos, but were disappointed by the results? Maybe the prints were darker or lighter than they looked on your monitor, or maybe they had a weird tint that seemed to just come out of nowhere.

Well, those problems most likely occurred because your monitor isn’t calibrated properly. The purpose of calibrating your monitor is to get it to display color as accurately as possible (so when you get your prints back from the photo lab, they look exactly like they did on your monitor). [Read more...]

What’s Wrong With This Photo?

March 25, 2013 By Vic Berardi 19 Comments

Rough-legged Hawk / Photo by Vic Berardi

This is a photo of a Rough-legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus). It breeds in the arctic and migrates southward down into the far southern areas of western Canada and throughout much of the United States where it spends most of the winter. Its journey southward and back again is long and arduous. This particular photo was taken in southern Wisconsin in early March.

Before we get into what’s wrong with this photo, let’s discuss a few good things about it.

At first glance, this is exactly the type of photograph that gets the most attention on forums, listservs and social networks. It might even be a photo that could potentially win a photo contest. Why? Because it captures a dramatic scene that instantly makes the observer feel some kind of emotion. [Read more...]

11 Tips For Avoiding Memory Card Problems

March 18, 2013 By Steve Berardi 25 Comments

SanDisk Memory Card

Once you snap some photos, the memory card becomes the most important part of your camera, because it’s responsible for transferring your photos safely back to your computer.

Just like any kind of technology, a lot can go wrong with memory cards. And the last thing you want to happen is to lose all your photos after capturing some spectacular shots, right?

So, here are 11 tips that will help prevent you from running into a memory card disaster: [Read more...]

How To Focus Closer With your Lenses

March 5, 2013 By Steve Berardi 4 Comments

Every lens has a minimum focusing distance: the closest point where the lens can get a sharp focus. Generally, the longer the focal length of the lens, the greater the minimum focusing distance.

Most of the time, this distance isn’t a problem because with longer lenses you’ll generally be photographing a distant subject.

But, those longer telephoto lenses are also great for close-up photography, because they help you isolate your subject against a specific part of the background. In these cases, this minimum focus distance often becomes a problem because many lenses won’t let you get close enough to fill the frame with a small subject (such as a wildflower or insect).

So, how do you make your lens focus closer? [Read more...]

How To Merge Two Exposures

February 18, 2013 By Steve Berardi 2 Comments

Photo by Steve Berardi

One of the most common problems in landscape photography occurs when photographing a sunrise or sunset: the sky is always super bright and the foreground is always super dark. This causes some trouble for your camera because it can’t handle that dramatic range of brightness.

There’s a few ways to solve this problem, but one solution is to shoot two exposures: one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the foreground. Then, you can merge these exposures later in Photoshop.

Here are some details on how to accomplish this: [Read more...]

Happy Birthday to PN!

February 18, 2013 By Steve Berardi 5 Comments

Photo by Will Clayton (used under the CC license)

Today I’m happy to announce two special milestones for PhotoNaturalist: today is PN’s fourth birthday, and we also just passed 10,000 subscribed readers!

It’s been an amazing four years. This blog has been one of the most rewarding projects of my life, and I’m looking forward to continuing it’s growth.

I want to send out a special thank you to everyone who’s helped spread the word about PhotoNaturalist. Social networking sites continue to be our biggest source of traffic, so if you’ve shared one of our posts with your friends, thank you for helping us grow