Au Naturale

This week's post will focus on nature photography. These pictures will not include animals, which will be next week's post topic (Spoiler Alert).

As shown above, landscape pictures do not need to be taken in a landscape orientation. You can have a picture going vertical (portrait style) as well. It all depends on what you want your frame to be. The time of day you take a landscape picture is crucial. If you go out to shoot at noon, all of you pictures will look flat, not dynamic. Good times to take nature pictures would be right around when the sun comes up or right around when the sun goes down. Sunsets and sun rises are really easy and really fun to take pictures of. As you can see from above, I love taking them. But just be careful, there is a limited amount of time when taking pictures of sunsets or sun rises, like 20 minutes max. You can notice differences within one minute of each other. So wait for the right moment.

 





Close ups are also a neat way to capture nature's beauty. Blurring out backgrounds by lowering your f-stop really adds emphasis to your subject. In this case, it is with flowers, an excellent subject for beginning photographers to shoot. They stay put, always look pretty, and will look good from a variety of angles. It gives you time to adjust your exposure settings and find different angles.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Don't be afraid to turn your camera sideways to get a portrait orientation as opposed to a landscape
• Really think about the time of day you go out to shoot
• Flat lighting looks boring
• Try for sunsets and sunrises!
• Don't be afraid to get up close!
• Blurry backgrounds can really emphasize a subject, such as with flowers

Look forward to next's week post on photographing animals!

And if you ever have recommendations for topics, please let me know. Just a busy college student who is quickly running out of ideas...