When you’re ready to purchase your next Canon camera or lens, it’ll be a good idea to see what others think about it by visiting the reviews section of The Lens Flare.

Using light for dramatic photographs:

The most important tip I can give you for any type of photography, especially outdoor and nature photography, is to pay attention to light. The light around dawn and dusk is generally the best light of the day for nature photos. At this time of day, the light from the sun passes through the atmosphere at an angle which creates dramatic shadows, makes rolling hills and mountains stand out, and the shadows and highlights are within a range of light that your camera can cope with. During the middle of the day, the contrast between shadows and highlights is too great, and your camera will either leave the shadows without detail or overexpose the bright points in your image. Shadows are also generally too harsh on living objects such as people and animals. Clouds soften and diffuse the light from the sun, which can leave landscapes looking flatter than normal, but can work well for portraits, wildlife images, and where contrast becomes an issue such as in a forest. Experimenting with different lighting conditions to find the right time of day for your specific image is the key. Sometimes a cloudy day, dawn or dusk, night, or during a storm is the perfect lighting condition to get the mood you want.

Foregrounds add interest to a sunrise or sunset photo:

Sunrises and Sunset photos have been popular since the advent of cameras, and will be popular forever. Because they are so popular, they can be over-photographed and cause a ho-hum reaction to your viewers. The best tip I can provide for exciting sunset images is to look for an interesting foreground such as a tree, fence, barn, animal, or a person in an interesting pose. Typically, the foreground object will become a silhouette, which is great because it won’t distract the viewer from the main subject of the picture - the beautiful colors of the sky.

Using the surroundings for better landscapes:

Landscapes are often better at the widest angle your camera will allow, assuming there aren’t any major distractions that could be avoided by zooming in or moving around. This is not always the case, so try a variety of shots from different positions and, if possible, different times of the day. Consider getting lower to the ground to capture more of the immediate foreground. Don’t place the main subject of your photo in the center of the picture. People automatically look at the center of a photograph. If the main subject is there, there’s no reason for them to look anywhere else, which makes the picture boring. If one object is dominating the picture, consider moving farther away from it or zoom out further on your camera.

Another tip for improving your landscape photos is to use the surroundings to draw the viewer’s eye towards the subject of the picture. By including a river, road, fence, or even a row of power poles, the photo has a natural line that the viewer’s eye will follow and make the picture more interesting to look at.

Reducing or removing distractions for better wildlife photos:

There’s a concept called depth of field, which basically refers to how much of the picture is in focus. For wildlife portraits, it’s often desirable to keep the animal in focus, while everything else is out of focus, which is referred to as a narrow depth of field. There are a few ways to do this. While still in auto mode on your camera, the best way to narrow the depth of field is to step back from your subject and zoom in on your subject as far as your camera will allow. Zooming in on your subject, also referred to as telephoto, compresses space which means that things seem closer to each other than they really are. It also narrows the depth of field.

The other way to narrow your depth of field is to change modes on your camera to aperture priority or use manual settings. It’s easiest to use aperture priority, which is usually denoted by a symbol of the letter “A” on your camera. When using this mode, you choose which aperture you want and your camera will figure out the rest. Aperture is another word for hole, and is referred to by its size. The funny f numbers on your camera refers to the size of the aperture; for example, f/4, f/8, etc. Without getting too technical, the smaller the number, the bigger the hole that light can go through to expose your image, and the narrower the depth of field. So f/4 will be narrower than f/8, but will have more of the picture in focus than f/1.8.

For portraits, wildlife photos, flowers, and macros, it’s usually desirable to start with the largest aperture (smallest f number) and longest focal length (zoomed in all the way) to produce the narrowest depth of field. In other words, the subject will be in focus, but nothing else. The next time you’re out, try experimenting with different apertures and focal lengths to get exactly the shot you’re looking for.

Look at your subject from different vantage points:

The last nature photography tip for this article is to simply walk around and look at your subject from different angles. Try to avoid problems like a branch or tree directly behind your subject because it’ll look like it’s growing out of their head. Circle your subject, move to the right, left, crouch down, or get higher up to see things from different vantage points. Some angles will have distracting glares or stark shadows, while another angle may be perfect. Remove distractions like garbage and wait for cars or planes to pass out of your frame if you can (unless the car or plane is your subject). If you’re shooting a close up of flowers, you’ll need to either shoot at a fast shutter speed by putting your camera on shutter priority or wait for the wind to stop blowing the flower. Don’t be afraid to shoot lots of pictures in hopes of getting just a few that are good.

Hopefully, this article has provided some useful tips to help you create better photographs of nature or whatever else you’re shooting without bogging you down by too many technical details. Don’t be afraid to experiment, but try and keep track of what you did to produce a specific picture so that you can do it again another day. Once you get that fantastic photo, be sure to upload it to your gallery on The Lens Flare, a community image gallery. We can’t wait to see it.

Ned Levi, a professional photographer from Philadelphia, gave me permission to quote him and had this to say:

I’ll tell you a little of what I carry for my nature photography.

The first thing I don’t carry is a backpack. I find it’s too hard to get my stuff in and out, and it tires me out carrying it. I use the Think Tank Photo modular system to carry my gear, from lenses, to memory cards, to everything else. I generally wear a light weight photographer’s vest too, with a zillion pockets for odds and ends.

I do carry a super wide angle zoom lens (10-20mm) for my D200, and my 18-200mm for a lot of general shots, but I also carry a zoom telephoto, longer than that 70-300mm you mentioned, as it just doesn’t reach far enough. I carry a Nikkor 80-400mm VR.

There are times when I take a monopod, but my carbon fiber based tripod is light enough that I sling that over my shoulder, especially if I’m out at dawn, and/or sunset. At those times and for panoramas you just can’t substitute anything for a tripod.

There are lots of times I’m taking wildlife photos of animals which are on the ground, and I want to take the photo at ground level. There is nothing better to save one’s back, and help you not have to lie on the ground when taking that photo than a Right Angle Viewfinder.

If there is any threat of rain, I always have my rain jacket of course, and my Think Tank modular bags all have built-in rain covers. I also carry my Storm Jacket rain cover for my D200. Just because it’s raining doesn’t mean you can’t get great photos.

Lately, I’ve been taking my Garman Geko 301 with me, attached to my D200, which will allow the camera to record the GPS coordinates of each of my photos. I can plot where I’ve been and better identify the shots.

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Another photographer, known as Silver, mentioned that he uses a “half vest”, which is designed for bird hunting. It’s actually not a vest, but rather a belt with 2 very big pockets in front to hold shotgun shells and a larger pocket in the rear to hold the birds.  When he gets where he’s going, he unloads most of his gear from his pack into the pockets in the half vest like his lenses, filter wallets, blowers, brushes, lens caps, hot shoe covers, etc.  He mentioned that the rear pocket is big enough to carry his waders.  He bought it at Cabela’s.

RAW files are not compressed, which allows you to ultimately print them bigger with better quality than JPG files.  For example, I can print up to 30 inches by 40 inches in RAW, while I can only print 20 inches by 30 inches with a JPG file and maintain the same quality.

Here is how to save your RAW file so that you can work with it like any other picture:

Open NEF or RAW file
Make adjustments as needed on RAW Adjustments Screen
Click OK on RAW Adjustments Screen
Click File -> Save As (to save to a PSD file)
OR
Click File -> Save for Web (to save as a JPG)
In “Save for Web”
Choose “JPEG” in drop down menu (instead of GIF)
Choose quality of “100″
Click Save

I recommend not saving as a JPG unless the printing company won’t accept PSD files. Rather save it as a PSD because when you save as a JPG, you lose some of the quality of the picture. If you save as a PSD, you don’t lose any quality. It’ll end up being a slightly larger file, but so what. Also, don’t save over the top of the original NEF file. That’s the source file that you can always go back to and mess with exposure compensation and other fun stuff. Of course, when you save as a PSD or JPG, it’ll have a different extension anyway so no big deal.

Their shares have dropped 31% in January-March, while Canon only dropped 12 percent.  Olympus Corp’s shares dropped by 35 percent over the same time period.

Landscape Nature Photographer:

For the landscape photographer, a super wide angle lens with a focal length somewhere between 10-28mm is recommended to capture a vast area or to frame a large object such as a waterfall when the photographer is relatively close to to it. Wide angle photography uses different techniques; for example, usually, you’ll want to be very close to your main subject, if possible, otherwise, your subject may be too small in the picture for it to be noticed. Waterfalls, rivers, landscapes, trees, and anything normally too large to be fully seen with a normal or telephoto lens are all excellent candidates for the super wide angle.

For Canon and Nikon users, Sigma has a super wide angle lens for about $500 for both Nikon and Canon, which is a 10mm-20mm lens built for DX DSLRs. Nikkor’s 12-24mm lens is about $1000, and Canon has comparable lenses as well.

In addition to having access to wide angle shots, the landscape nature photographer will also benefit from normal focal lengths of 28-70mm when it’s desirable to shoot something slightly closer than the super wide angle, and a telephoto lens of 70mm-300mm+ to zoom in on a distant object such as a mountain, waterfall in the distance, or other natural feature. Telephoto lenses compress space, and I’ve seen where people use this technique on rolling hills or mountains for dramatic effect.

Wildlife Nature Photographer:

The telephoto lens is the nature photographer’s bread and butter. It’s important to have a lens with as large an aperture and as long of a focal length as a person can afford. These lenses get expensive very quickly, but a reasonable lens can be purchased for about $500 such as the Nikkor 70mm-300mm VR lens. A faster (bigger aperture) lens for the same focal length is going to cost at least $2000, so it’s a good starting point for all but professional wildlife photographers. With the lens, you’ll still need to be relatively close to get a good shot of a small bird, but it won’t be a problem for larger wildlife such as deer, moose, or bison.

A macro lens is also of use to the wildlife photographer that specializes in shooting insects and other small creatures because the macro lens can focus at a very short distance.

Flower Nature Photographer:

The macro lens is the mainstay for the flower photographer, along with any other equipment that magnifies and shortens the focus range. Bellows, extension tubes, and magnification filters are common to get in close to capture the delicate parts of a small flower. Having a huge aperture is also important keep a narrow depth of field. While you’re getting started, a 50mm 1.8f prime lens combined with a 3x magnification filter will produce good results for about $100. For about $300, you can get a 50mm 1.4f, which will narrow the depth of field even further, but it’s probably not worth it at first especially since a macro lens start at around $300 as well.

Other Equipment for the Nature Photographer:

In addition to camera equipment, you’ll need a good pack. There are backpacks available that combine a pack with a camera bag for about $200. Since you’ll be doing a lot of hiking, it’s good to limit how bulky your equipment can be. Also, consider buying a monopod to help stabilize your photos. Monopods can be doubled up as a walking stick or can be stored away in your pack. You’ll also need food and water while hiking and other safty precautions, which is described in detail in my article titled, what to take on a nature photography hiking excursion.

Daz is offering a great deal for the rest of May. Normally, these programs add up to $1300, but during May 2009, Daz Platinum members can purchase all of these in a package for $199 which includes:

• Carrara 6.1 Pro for non-linear animation, dynamic hair, and displacement modeling tools.
• Bryce 6.1 for excellent digital landscapes, animation, and 3d modeling.
• Hexagon 2.5 which allows you to sculpt primitives,use freehand modeling brushes, and includes Daz Studio 3d bridge.
• Mimic Lite which makes it possible to have animated speech.
• Mimic Pro which allows you to create and edit facial animation sequences.
• Mimic Pro for Lightwave, which integrates the two programs.

To get the deal, you’ll need to become a Daz platinum member, which will cost $30 the first month and $8 a month after, but you can cancel your monthly subscription.
Basically, you’ll be able to get started in 3d graphics with minimal learning curve quickly and without spending a lot of money. For 3D graphics programs, $200 is cheap because most of them cost thousands of dollars.

I’ve been using Bryce for years and love it. You can read my reviews on 3 of these products by visiting the Daz 3d Review page. For examples of 3d images created by Bryce, visit the Bryce Image Gallery.

When you’re ready, use this link to buy the Daz Package for $199.

Lenses contain several glass elements to ensure good quality pictures, and the actual flare is created when light reflects and scatters across various lens elements before it reaches the digital sensor or film.

A good lens hood can eliminate flare caused by stray light from outside the angle of view; however, most lens hoods do not extend far enough to block all stray light. Zoom lenses can only be large enough to block stray light at the widest focal length.

An adjustable bellows can be used, which is a lens hood that matches the field of view for a given focal length. You can also use a piece of paper or your hand to block the light, but this can be problematic at best.

Fixed focal length lenses are less likely to have lens flares than zoom lenses because zoom lenses have more internal surfaces for light to reflect on. Wide angle lenses are designed to have fewer lens flares because the sun is likely going to be in the picture more often. Also, newer lenses have more anti-reflective coatings to reduce lens flare even further.

Contrast problems resulting from lens flares can be corrected in Photoshop or other good graphics software by adjusting the levels or curves of an image. If a flare is desired, but not present, it can also be added in post production by selecting the lens flare filter in Photoshop. There are several simulated focal lengths which can be used to produce starbursts and other artifacts.

• Login to The Lens Flare by entering your user name and password into the login fields near the top of the page in the blue bar.
• Visit the contest page.
• Click on “Submit Artwork” near the contest that you want to enter.  The open contests are at the top of the page when you’re logged in.
• Choose an image name from the drop down menu.
• Click on Submit Image

Once you’ve entered an image of your photo or art into the contest, be sure to come back when voting begins to help select the winning picture.  When voting, you can select your 4 favorite images, and the one with the most overall votes wins.

The next contest is for flower photography, so make sure you get your entry in before the deadline, which is the end of the month. To enter, please visit the contest page.