Tips & Techniques

Wildlife photography can be a deeply rewarding pursuit, but capturing images that go beyond mere documentation requires creativity and intentionality.

A lifetime of experience on this planet leads us to believe that a clear sky is always blue. Certainly the clear daytime sky is always some shade of blue. As day ebbs into night and our color vision fades away, the last color we see in the sky directly above us is blue; as night gives way to dawn, the first sky color we see above us is once again blue.

Outside of great light, a solid composition might be the single most important aspect of a great landscape image. If you were to ask one hundred landscape photographers what area of their own photography they’d like to improve upon, I bet the vast majority of them would say composition.

Below are 20 tips to increase your productivity when cropping and straightening landscape, nature, and other outdoor photos in Lightroom Classic. At the bottom of this post, check out my video tutorial, where you’ll learn how to quickly crop and straighten landscape images, work with custom aspect ratios, and display Crop tool overlays to improve a photo’s composition in Lightroom Classic’s Develop module.

I frequently see outdoor photographers spending tons of money for the newest camera or lens, and then mounting their fancy new gear on top of a cheap tripod. Not even the very best glass or camera will improve your images if you don’t invest equally in getting the right tripod.

If you’re looking for a quick tutorial on how to shoot astrophotography with your iPhone check out the below video, which will have you capturing the stars in no time. Brought to you by QuickTips for the iPhone, this tutorial is for beginners just learning about shooting the night sky with the phone in their pockets.

If you’re just starting out in landscape photography or even if you’ve been at it for a while, you may be making some key editing mistakes while processing your images after a shoot. Not every skilled photographer knows their way around Photoshop or Lightroom and there’s no shame in that.