Photo by Steve Berardi

So, here’s a brief introduction to IR photography and its effects:

Benefits and Effects of IR Photography

So, what’s so special about IR photography? Well, it produces some interesting effects, which you might be looking for in one of your images:

• Creates dark skies. One of the things IR photography is best known for is producing very dark skies. When you convert your IR image to black and white, the sky will usually be completely black—which is great for images where you want to highlight a bright object against a dark sky, or you want a dark sky to make the landscape appear more intimidating or powerful.
• Makes plants bright white. Any plants (such as trees, bushes, flowers, etc) in your IR image will show up very bright (usually white) after you convert it to black and white. This effect works really well with the dark sky effect, because it helps create strong contrast between the sky and plants—making the plants really stand out in your image.
• Eliminates haze. One of the lesser known effects of IR photography is that it helps eliminate haze. Have you ever tried photographing distant mountains or a long canyon and ended up with a bunch of washed out images? It’s usually because of haze—the farther you get from a mountain, the more haze will become a problem. Sometimes this haze adds an interesting element to an image, but if you’re looking to get rid of it, then IR photography might be worth a try.

How to get started

The simplest way to get started with IR photography is to purchase an IR filter for your lenses. This is a special kind of filter that blocks out all visible light and only lets infrared light into your camera.

You’ll notice that there’s lots of different types of IR filters, which are usually marked with a range like 800-2000nm. This range refers to the wavelengths of light that the filter will allow to pass through. For reference, the human eye can see wavelengths ranging from 390-700nm. I’d recommend starting with a filter that begins somewhere between 700nm and 800nm—these actually let in a very small amount of visible light, which helps keep your exposure times down.

Since the IR filter blocks most of the visible light, and since your camera blocks most of the IR light, there’s actually very little light that makes it to your camera’s sensor when you have an IR filter on your lens. So, you’ll need much longer exposures than normal (usually around 20 seconds at f/11 in the mid-day sun).

With these longer exposures, you’ll definitely need to use a tripod to keep your camera steady. If the longer exposures create problems (e.g. if it’s really windy and the plants end up blurry in your image), then you can try increasing your ISO speed to get a shorter exposure.

Once you capture a photo with an IR filter, you’ll notice that the image has a red tint. Don’t worry, this is normal! Later in post-processing, simply convert the image to black and white.

Example: Smoke Tree

Smoke Tree / Photo by Steve Berardi

Personally, I love to use IR photography to photograph plants in the desert. I feel like the dark skies really help portray the harshness of the desert environment, and the bright white vegetation helps make those fascinating desert plants stand out.

For example, one of my favorite plants of the Sonoran Desert is the Smoke Tree. This tree got its name because it actually looks a lot like smoke. And, to emphasize how much it looks like smoke, I thought it’d be good to create some black and white images of them—particularly with IR. The image above shows a bright Smoke Tree in front of a dark sky.

What did I miss?

If you’ve experimented with IR photography, and have found another interesting effect or benefit, then please tell us about it by leaving a comment below. Thanks!

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

Photo by Vic Berardi

The coyote has adapted so well that they’re considered pests in some areas. As a result, many aggressive hunting campaigns have been launched against them. But, in spite of this, they continue to thrive.

So, what can the coyote teach you about nature photography?

Well, one of the reasons that the coyote has survived so well is that they’re opportunistic hunters. That means they’ll eat whatever’s plentiful. If it was a good year for mice, they’ll eat a lot of mice. If it was a good year for rabbits, they’ll eat rabbits. They even have a large vegetarian portion of their diet.

So, instead of being dependent on one source of food like many mammals (such as the endangered Kit Fox which pretty much ONLY eats Kangaroo rats), the coyote varies their diet so they can survive on pretty much anything.

You can apply this same strategy to nature photography: instead of targeting one subject when you go out for a hike, you can be more open and focus on whatever’s plentiful.

If it was a good year for wildflowers, then it might be a great opportunity to find one with a perfect background. Or, maybe it’s the time of year when some birds are migrating through your area—might be a perfect opportunity for photographing a rare bird.

If you hike the same trail often every year, then you’ll see some really interesting trends. One year, there might be a ton of squirrels, and another year there might be a ton of lizards, or one specific species of flower (and the next year you won’t see any).

Unlike other types of photography, with nature you often won’t be able to photograph what you set out to photograph that day—either because of weather, the time of year, or maybe it just wasn’t a good year for that subject you’re after. So, adopting a more “opportunistic” approach to nature photography will usually result in a lot more photo opportunities.

This approach also makes nature photography much more relaxing, because instead of focusing on one subject (and then getting disappointed when you don’t even see any that day), you focus on anything that’s interesting—and as I’m sure you know, there’s always something interesting happening in the wild

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

Well, if that isn’t reason enough for you, here’s another benefit of using a tripod: it forces you to think more carefully about your composition.

When you handhold your camera, there’s a tendency to snap away photos as soon as you spot your subject. Then, after you got a few shots, you’ll just move on.

But, add a tripod to the equation, and all of a sudden you’ll be carefully adjusting those knobs until the camera is exactly where you want it. Sometimes this will take a considerable amount of time, but during this extra time there’s a good chance you’ll notice something new about your subject that will take your composition into a whole new direction.

Adding all this extra setup time will also naturally force you to consider your composition more carefully before you setup that tripod.

Galen Rowell argued that this is one of the reasons why photos made from large-format cameras always seem to look better: a lot of it is just because the large-format photographer has to spend a considerable amount of time setting up his or her camera. He explains this in his wonderful book Mountain Light:

“…differences in approach between large- and small-format photographers matter more than their equipment. A large-format photographer would stop at a scene, consider it for a while, then spend long minutes setting up his camera until the scene was framed exactly the way he wanted it. A typical amateur with a 35mm would stop, turn toward the scene, make a handheld exposure or two within the first minute, and leave. The reason the 35mm image doesn’t look like the 4-by-5 image is more a result of method than of equipment.”

Rowell also explained that “When I come across a still landscape that moves me, I pretend my Nikon is a bigger camera.” So, I think even adding the battery grip to your camera can help you treat it more like a large format camera, and inadvertently force you to think more carefully about your compositions.

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

Photo by Steve Berardi

Landscapes are one of the most difficult subjects in nature photography. It’s always hard deciding what to include and what to leave out. And, it’s not easy translating a vast three dimensional space into a two dimensional photo.

Well, the next time you’re having trouble composing a landscape photograph, consider these three elements:

Foreground

The job of the foreground is to lead the viewer’s eyes into the background. This helps add a lot of depth to the image, which makes the two dimensional photo look more like it’s three dimensional.

The foreground doesn’t have to be particularly amazing (as long as the background is)–just pick something that contrasts well with the background. Any objects with leading lines that point towards the background definitely help too.

If there are any large or notable objects in the foreground (such as flowers, big rocks, trees, etc), then it might help to either put them in the center of the frame and have them expand the entire width of the frame, or put them off center (following the rule of thirds). The photo above would have looked very weird if all those large rocks in the foreground were in a big pile in the center of the image, instead of being off to the sides.

Background

Usually, the background is the most dramatic part of a landscape photograph, because it’s what the foreground leads up to. So, when the viewer’s eyes get there, it’s nice to have something powerful to look at.

Classic backgrounds include things like mountains, hills, lone trees, lakes, or great big skies with interesting cloud formations (especially at sunrise or sunset).

One simple way to make the background stronger is to photograph the landscape under strong light, which is another element of a great landscape

Strong light

If there’s one thing that can really add a lot of impact to your landscape images, then it’s strong light. By that, I mean just about any lighting conditions that produce saturated color or strong contrast.

One way to get more saturated color is to photograph your landscapes during sunrise or sunset. These are known as the “golden hours” because they produce a softly diffused light that results in colors that “pop” with saturation (the photo above was shot at sunrise). Also, keep in mind that the sunrise typically casts a cooler (blue tinted) light, and the sunset always casts a very warm (red tinted) light.

Generally, the mid-day sun produces more flat looking colors.

But, the mid-day sun shouldn’t be avoided completely. In fact, Ansel Adams created some of his most powerful images under the mid-day sun. The key to photographing landscapes under the mid-day sun is to focus on contrast of brightness instead of contrasting colors—this means the daytime is great for capturing images that you later convert to black and white. The daytime sunlight has a habit of producing harsh shadows, so it’s a great time to capture some strong contrast—the key is to think in black and white.

What did I miss?

If there’s another element you usually see in strong landscapes, please tell us about it by leaving a comment below. Thanks!

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

The articles are written by a variety of professional photographers and cover a wide range of topics. And although some of the articles may not specifically apply to nature photography, I’ve always felt you can learn a lot by exploring other types of photography.

Here’s a list of what you’ll learn in this free ebook:

• Benefits of shooting in manual mode
• How to recognize good light
• How to isolate your subject
• How to balance your flash with ambient light
• Tips for working with black and white images
• How to make sharper images
• Tips for dealing with “bad light”
• Tips for streamlining your post-processing

All of the articles are written by some really inspirational photographers, so I think you’ll learn a lot from every page of the ebook. One of my favorite things about the book is that at the end of every article there are links to more ebooks that explore that topic in more depth.

Get the eBook now!

Be sure to check out their other free ebook too. It’s also packed with some great tips

And, if you enjoy their free ebooks (which I’m sure you will!), then I’d highly recommend checking out some of their paid eBooks too. I’ve been reading eBooks from Craft & Vision ever since they started publishing, and I feel like their books are some of the best resources for improving your compositional skills. They’ve put together a great team of photographers.

I especially enjoy the books by David duChemin and Andrew Gibson. Not only are they excellent photographers, but they’re also exceptional teachers and writers. They have a special talent for explaining complex ideas in a clear and easy to understand way. Here are some specific books I can recommend:

• Drawing the Eye by David duChemin
• Ten by David duChemin
• Up Close by Andrew Gibson
• Beyond Thirds by Andrew Gibson

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the free eBook!

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

California Wild Rose / Photo by Steve Berardi

So, here are three quick tips to get you started:

#1 – Get down to your subject’s level

Many of the plants and insects that come out in the spring live very low to the ground, so your first reaction may be to photograph them from where you first spot them (standing up and looking down at them). But, many times it’s better to get down to your subject’s level and photograph them from there because it captures a more friendly point of view (almost as if you’re seeing eye-to-eye with your subject).

#2 – Choose a good background

When you stumble upon a beautiful wildflower or butterfly, sometimes it’s easy to concentrate entirely on your primary subject and completely forget about the background. But, a good background is essential to a good close-up photo because it can tremendously help draw attention to your subject and make it really stand out.

What makes a good background? For close-ups, you’re usually looking for two things: a background that’s far away and contrasts well with your subject. The distance helps keep your background out of focus, and the contrast will help make your subject look sharper.

#3 – Be patient!

Remember, good nature photos take time. Sometimes you’ll encounter an awesome subject like a rare dragonfly, but it has the worst background. Don’t give up hope! Keep looking! It may take awhile to find the perfect subject in front of the perfect background (and under perfect lighting and wind conditions), but your patience will pay off in the end

Check out our free eBooks for more great tips!

If you’re new to PhotoNaturalist, then be sure to check out our two free ebooks for more great tips on close-up photography:

• 13 Tips For Wildflower Photography by Steve Berardi
• How To Photograph Dragonflies by Vic Berardi

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

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).

How to calibrate your monitor

The simplest way to calibrate your monitor is to use a monitor calibration device. These devices look like a computer mouse, and hang from the top of your monitor while some software runs a few tests.

Using them is usually extremely easy. All you have to do is plug it in to your computer, install the included software, and let the software guide you through the whole process. The most difficult part of the process is hanging the device from your monitor and getting it to stay still in the center of your screen (but don’t worry, this is super easy!!).

There’s a few really great calibration devices out there, but I can personally recommend the Spyder4Pro. The software for this device was very easy to follow, and it successfully calibrated my monitor so now when I order prints of my photos, they look exactly like they did on my screen.

If you’ve had good success with another calibration device, please tell us about it by leaving a comment below!

More details on calibrating your monitor

For more technical information on calibrating your monitor and the importance of color management, check out these great articles:

• Overview of Color Management by Sean McHugh
• Monitor Calibration for Photography by Sean McHugh
• The Myth of the Screen to Print Match by Rich Seiling

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

Photos of computer monitors courtesy of Shutterstock

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

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.

Technically, the photo is good. It’s reasonably sharp overall. It’s also exposed properly, given the range of tones present (strong whites with deep blacks) and as I mentioned before, it offers some drama.

One might conclude that nothing is wrong with this image, right? Well, okay maybe the bird’s feet could’ve been a bit sharper if I used a faster shutter speed. But if I used a faster shutter speed, then that would’ve required either a wider aperture (which would’ve sacrificed depth of field), or I would’ve had to use a higher ISO (which would’ve added more noise to the photo).

What else? Maybe a look at the shots before or after this one might be better (technically better and artistically better with the same emotional effect). Nope, this is the only shot that came out reasonably well. By the way, the settings on this photo were ISO 400, f/8 @ 1/1000 second. The camera and lens I used was a Canon 7D, and a Canon 500mm f/4 (w/1.4X Canon Teleconverter), handheld with the IS set at Mode 1. The exposure was intentionally pushed to the right, roughly 2/3 overexposed, but more on that in a later post.

How about we look at one of the earlier shots I took of this bird:

Rough-legged Hawk / Photo by Vic Berardi

Technically, this shot is equivalent to the first one: properly exposed and reasonably sharp. We might even say that it’s framed/cropped in an acceptable manner. But this one isn’t nearly as dramatic as the first one. The bird is perched and at rest. It might be a good photo for a bird guidebook, but it probably won’t get many “oohs” and “ahhhhs.” Birders and naturalists may enjoy looking at this image, but I think the general public would probably vote for the first one because it’s a much more dramatic image that shows the bird in some kind of action.

So what is it then? Why am I asking that very first question on the first photo?

Here’s why. This second photo shows the bird the way I saw it as I was driving down the road. It was either hunting for food or simply resting. But what happened when I stopped my vehicle to take a photo of it? It stayed in place for approximately 3 seconds and fled in a hurry as seen in the first photo. My presence disrupted its activity. Sure, I got a nice photo and everything, but is this behavior on my part acceptable in terms of the bird’s welfare? There’s a lot of public debate on this and that’s not the point of this post. I merely want to shed light on the fact that as photonaturalists we must take into account what our presence does to wildlife.

All across the world, in many cases, photographers disrupt the daily lives of animals. It can be argued that if the incident is isolated (as was the case when I encountered this bird), there may be little, if any, repercussions. But what if this bird was pursued all day, every day by several photographers or sight-seer’s? Wouldn’t that have a more drastic effect? Just something to think about…

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Vic Berardi is a raptor lover that lives in the Midwest. He is the founder of the Illinois Beach State Park Hawk Watch and every weekend of the year you’ll find him searching for hawks and photographing them. Several of his photographs have been published in a leading raptor journal and in articles he has written. During the year he gives presentations teaching others about hawks and hawk migration. Vic also photographs dragonflies and wild flowers and is always respectful of nature and its creatures.

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:

1 – Format a new memory card as soon as you get it

Even if your memory card came “preformatted,” it’s still a good idea to format them again with your own camera. And, only format the card from the camera itself (and NOT when it’s inside a card reader that’s connected to your computer). This will make sure the memory card is using a file system the camera recognizes.

2 – Use multiple small cards, instead of one big one

With the huge memory cards available today, it’s tempting to just buy the largest one so you won’t have to switch cards. But, what if your 128GB card fails? Then you just lost thousands of photos! That’s why you should use multiple smaller cards, to spread out your photos and reduce the probability that you’ll lose them all at once.

3 – Always leave a few extra shots on your memory card

Your camera probably has a number on the screen that tells you how many photos you can take before your memory card is full. This number is only an estimate, so if you happen to take a photo when your card is actually full, you may corrupt the data on the card. To avoid this problem, always leave some extra space on the card.

4 – Always safely “eject” your memory card from the computer

When you’re done transferring your photos to your computer, make sure to “eject” them properly and don’t just yank it out of the reader (or yank out the USB cable). On Windows, there should be an icon in the lower right corner of your screen for safely removing USB media, and on Macs you can just use the eject button on your keyboard. This is important because although you may think the computer is no longer reading/writing to the card, it may still be accessing it for some reason. Ejecting it will tell the computer to stop communicating with it, so you can take it out safely.

5 – Format your memory card, instead of deleting all photos

Formatting your memory cards is sort of like resetting them, and making them “fresh” again. It will help correct any disk errors that may have occurred during your last shoot.

6 – Store your cards in a safe place

It’s important to protect the contacts on your memory cards, because the smallest piece of dust can cause reading/writing problems and ultimately loss of photos. To protect them, always store them in the case they came with (or get some if they didn’t come with a case), and don’t leave them lying around on your desk.

7 – Turn off your camera before removing the memory card

Although this may seem like a no-brainer, there’s already been a few times where I almost forgot to turn off the camera before removing the memory card. If you yank out the card with the camera on, there’s a chance you may remove it when the camera is reading/writing to it, which could potentially damage files on the card.

8 – Use a good quality card reader

Although the reader merely reads the memory card, there’s still a chance it can damage the card. That’s why it’s important to always use a good quality reader. The best thing to do is use a reader made by the same manufacturer as the cards you use.

9 – Don’t push your batteries to the limit

If you push your batteries to the limit and wait until they completely run out of energy, then there’s a chance they’ll run out at the exact moment your camera is writing to your memory card (which could cause data loss). To avoid this possibility, put in a fresh battery as soon as your camera indicates the current one is low.

10 – Don’t use the same card on multiple cameras

If you used a card to take 40 photos on one camera, don’t put it in a different camera to take more photos. The two cameras (even if made by the same manufacturer) may have different file system requirements or architecture, so mixing them between cameras could corrupt the data on the card.

11 – Only use good quality memory cards

Photos are known to disappear “mysteriously” with cheap off-brand memory cards, so always buy good quality cards. You don’t have to get the top of the line super-mega-fast-10,000x-warp-speed-gold-plated cards, but you shouldn’t get the no-name cheap ones either. Personally, I’m a big fan of SanDisk and Lexar.

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.

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?

Use an extension tube

An extension tube (pictured above) is a pretty basic piece of equipment: it’s just a hollow tube that extends the distance between the lens and the camera’s sensor. The more you increase this distance, the closer the lens can focus.

Extension tubes come in a variety of different sizes, from 12mm to 50mm, but the one around 25mm is usually the most useful. For example, if you put the 25mm extension tube on a Canon 70-200 F/4L lens, you can change the minimum focusing distance from 4.9 ft to about 4 ft (which can make a big difference in close-up photography).

Although the 25mm tube is probably the one you’ll use the most, there’s also a benefit to owning a set of different tube sizes. One of the great things about extension tubes is that you can stack them together to make your lens focus even closer. Ever since getting a set of these tubes, I often stack a 36mm with a 20mm to make my lenses focus extremely close. This helps me fill the frame with small subjects like these wildflowers:

Purple Nightshade / Photo by Steve Berardi

If you ever use an extension tube with a teleconverter, remember to attach the teleconverter to your camera first (so the extension tube should be between the teleconverter and lens).

Save $20 on a set of three extension tubes!

The nice folks over at Adorama (one of my two favorite online camera retailers) have agreed to give us $20 off a set of Kenko extension tubes for Canon or Nikon lenses. This is the same set of tubes that I use and recommend, so if you’re interested in trying them out, now’s a great time to get them

• Buy the Canon Extension Tubes – Save $20!
• Buy the Nikon Extension Tubes – Save $20!

These deals expire at midnight EST on March 13, 2013.

Kenko also used to make a 25mm tube that sold for around $80, but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore at B&H or Adorama.

Get more great tips in our free weekly newsletter.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, software engineer, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of southern California.