Canon digital cameras for the nature photographer
Nikon digital cameras for the nature photographer Nikon cameras at Nikon Chat
Sony digital cameras for nature photography
How to capture the essence of autumn colors in pictures when we enjoy the beauty of the autumn in New England or in one of the other states famous for the colorful fall foliage? After many years of experience when taking pictures of autumn leaves for professional stock photography and for books and articles I reveal some of my techniques in this article.
Nowadays it is so much easier and more fun to use digital cameras for taking pictures in the outdoors of autumn leaves and the nice colors of fall foliage. With a digital camera you can immediately check if your shot was hitting what you wanted to capture and it is easy to redo it if needed.
The captured digital files will easily support your memory of a nice fall experience and you can work on with them at home on your computer and display it for others. The Outdoor Photographer Magazine (http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/) brings a lot of inspiration for your outdoor autumn photography every year.
When you are on location you can choose to achieve esthetic pleasant pictures without emphasis on the natural object you are choosing. Or you can go for nature photography in the pure sense of communicating species in nature like the aspen or the maple trees or insects on fall foliage e.g. preparing for the coming wintertime. Or you can choose to focus on landscape photography.
Many nature photographers would say they aim at combining these intentions, but in reality you might benefit from this distinction for your autumn photography.
First release your imagination for possible pictures - it isn't just the option to take pictures of fall scenics with vivid autumn color.
You can choose to communicate in your photos:
Close-up shots of single colors or contrasting colors or a palette of autumn colors.
Grand vistas of autumn scenics.
Everything there are in between, like individual trees.
Fallen colorful autumn leaves or leaves with strong colors still hanging or the branches.
Combining autumn leaves with soil, with big stones, with the blue sky or with water.
Make use of raindrops (as natural or some you add artificially to the autumn leaves)
Make use of fruits of the season, or other signs of autumn.
Combining the fall foliage with colorful mushrooms.
A simple digital camera will have many options to choose from for your autumn photography:
Go close with the macro function
Make wide angle shots
Make tele photo shots
Make experiments with the different settings, often provided with the camera, like soft colors or strong colors.
Try the highest ASA setting to get more corny pictures.
Compose your picture to make it interesting
Make a rather simple build up of the picture composition to avoid resulting messy photos.
The tele setting of the lens is fine for isolating objects and blur the background.
Try a very low position of the camera to add an interesting angle, or to isolate an object.
With wide angle shots include some interesting object in the foreground. Make sure it will be in focus together with the rest of the picture.
The main object in the picture can be framed to one of the sides - often to the left seems most natural.
Be careful with deep shadows as they might come out completely black on your digital file and prohibit you to work on with the problem in Photoshop or another photo editing program.
As always the light is essential to get the bright autumn colors, but also days with overcast sky can give beautiful pictures and communicate the special mood of autumn.
In sun you have the option to make the full use of backlight to lightning up the magnificent leaf colors: reds, yellows and golden in combination with nuances of green. Especially when you combine backlit colorful leaves with isolation of leaves you can produce beautiful photos.
A circular polarizer filter is still useful equipment for digital photography in the outdoors and it will enhance the colors of the sky as well as the foliage if the sun is shining from an angel to your view.
Read more about autumn photography in 'The Art of Outdoor Photography: Techniques for the Advanced Amateur and Professional' by Boyd Norton, and about the further processing of your digital pictures in 'Outdoor Photographer Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2' by Rob Sheppard.
Soren Breiting has a background as a biologist and has been in stock photography for many years. You find a smaller selection of Soren’s high quality stock photos of fall foliage at A-Z Fotos (http://www.azfotos.com) and autumn relevant links at http://www.fall-foliage.net/.
Featured
Anon,Ellen
& Tim Grey
Photoshop ® for Nature Photographers : A Workshop in a Book.
Incl. CD. SBN: 0-7821-4427-6 Paperback, 314 pages. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Publishers. August 2005
Description: Photoshop for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Bookis the first book that teaches nature photographers practical Photoshop skills that will solve their most common problems. It features a real-world approach that simulates a workshop experience, gorgeous photography, and tips and techniques from the biggest names in nature photography.
Ellen Anon is an accomplished photographer — her photos have been showcased in calendars, posters, galleries, magazines, and books, including Sierra Club's Mother Earth. Ellen teaches photography and Photoshop workshops for nature photographers around the country.
Tim Grey writes about digital photography for Digital Photo Pro, Outdoor Photographer, and PC Photo magazines. He is the author of Photoshop CS2 Workflow, Color Confidence, and co-author of Photo Finish, all from Sybex. Tim is also a popular speaker at seminars and trade shows. In his almost-daily "Digital Darkroom Questions" (DDQ) e-mail service, he answers questions from photography enthusiasts and pros.
Angel, H. ( ) The book of nature photography: a practical guide to creative techniques. Ebury Press (Dorling Kindersly).
Campbell, L. (1990) Guide to birds and nature photography. RSPB/David & Charles.
Tim Fitzharris: Nature Photography : National Audubon Society Guide
John Shaw:
The Nature Photographer's Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques
Nature Photographers Online Magazine
Photo gallery by nature photographer Soren Breiting
Nature photography
is one of the most rewarding - and difficult - kinds of photography.
It is a challenging hobby and a difficult professional way of living.
Each nature photographer will often combine the income from selling the pictures with additional income generating activities like:
WorldEcho offers
templates and portfolio facilities for nature photographers, other photographers
and artists.
But I find it too expensive compared to other offers, see below, because the
number of nature photographs you can have online is very limited. It is the
limitation in webspace that will limit your web presense, and it isn't competitive
when you take other options into consideration.
The problem is also that you cannot be sure, that these web designs will generate a substantial number of visitors through traffic generated from Google and other search engines. You find WebEcho here.
Web
hosting for your own website where you present yourself as a nature photographer.
At SiteBuildIt you will get unlimited space for your nature
photos and there are no limitations to how much traffic you can have for the
basic fee.
The biggist deal is all the additional benefits you get to support your development of a high ranking website with a lot of traffic. This is the most overlooked aspect by photographers. I cannot tell you how many websites I see with nice photography, but without much traffic.
Many photographers seem to be happy with less than a hundred visitors a day, or 'successful ones' with just a few hundreds.
This is a very modest amount of traffic for a good photography site. Many get even much less.
Remember, that you will compete with more than 320.000.000 websites and pages when people search for "photo" in Google.
Even when they search for a specific term like "nature photos" you will still have to compete with a little less than 200.000.
With a search after "nature photography" your competition with be around 900.000 - again a very tuff competition and it is only getting worse and worse.
Many photographers will run banner ads and text ads and these can easily cost them a lot of money.
To me this isn't the solution. The solution is to use the help we can get from a service like SiteBuildIt (and I don't know any other service like that). I have at present two websites hosted at Site Build It and make use of all the extra knowledge I get from these websites for running my other websites successfully. Here you see the proof of what Site Build It help us with.
Go down the Site Build It page to A "Few" (Hundred) More Success Stories! and click this. (Be patient while downloading this long list).
Search in your browser's edit function with 'Find' after one of the words 'picture' or 'photo' and you will get to examples of very successful nature photographers. You can see how they rank in traffic in this very competitive area of nature photography of nature photographers.
You will also get the best help on any technical issue, and how to get some additional income from your display of your nature photograhy and other photos.
Remark the
importance of
Good content -> Traffic -> Presell ->
Monetize
and take your time to read the full explanation with imporntant information.
You can create
the good content if you have good nature pictures. With Site Build It you will
learn that to get traffic it isn't as much about the quality of your photos
as it is about the quality of the text you add to your pictures.
You can use your nature photography even if your main content isn't about nature
photography
but for example focussed on hotels near to where your nature photos were taken.
I many ways you can learn to combine your different interests and earn some
good money, even to make a living or just to cover your costs of your photography
as a nature photographer.
You find more general information about the SiteBuildIt system here - take your time to read it through, it might be some of your most valuable minutes online.
The Outdoor Photogographer Magazine
Nature Photographers online Magazine
John Shaw and his new lightroom ebook
Nature Photography in Wikipedia
Wildlife photography with digital cameras from blinds in National Parks etc.
US National Wildlife Federation with lots of info for nature photographers
Wildlife Nature photography at photo.net
Overview of photography sites including nature photography site
50 Nature photography bloggers
Online PhotoSharing .net gives you an overview of the possibilities and prices for sharing your nature photography with other nature photographers if you don't want your own website.
The photo Diary of Soren Breiting = Me :-)) and my professional blog about nature conservation etc.
See Top-Photographers photo galleries online
Photo Soren
This website is hosted by www.newwebsite.com/azfotos