Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Outdoor Photographer

How To Photograph Volcanoes The challenges, risks and rewards of photographing Earth’s eruptive power. By Mike Mezeul II Wild By Nature Melissa Groo’s column considers the techniques and field ethics of wildlife photography. Assignments Share your best shots in our weekly “Assignments” photo challenges. Submit images that fit the week’s theme—you may be our next Assignment winner. Tip Of The Week Available on our website—or delivered directly to your inbox—our “Tip of the Week” provides shooting and processing techniques to sharpen your photography skills. Sign up today. Connect With Us Get the latest news and be inspired by great photos from the Outdoor Photographer community. Newsletter Subscribe today for updates on the latest features, how-to articles and photography news. outdoorphotographer.com/newsletter…

Proficiency By Linn Smith “Tricolored herons are found year-round along the shoreline of Lake Jessup located in Central Florida. I spotted this particular immature tricolored foraging for prey close to the noon hour. As seen in this photo, their plumage changes in color rather dramatically in their juvenile stage when they’re grayish-blue overall with dark streaking on the neck and brownish body feathers mixed throughout. “Tiny fish make up 90 percent of the tricolor’s diet. Knowing tricolors sometimes stand motionless, waiting for unsuspecting prey to swim by, I patiently observed this heron until it spotted a tiny fish and bent its beak at that exact moment into the water to retrieve it.” See more of Linn Smith’s work at 500px.com/p/LinnSmith. Lupine Field By Jeff Nigro “When I heard that there…

Colorful wildflowers announce a new year, new growth and freshness on the land. “Spring” wildflowers bloom not just in spring but throughout the fall in many regions of the country. Blooming depends on seasonal weather, altitude, temperature, habitat and latitude. I live in California, a state over 1,000 miles from north to south, blessed with all these elements. I can photograph wildflowers from early February through September. You can find similar situations in many regions of the country. Join me as I go on the road in California to reveal the best spots to photograph wildflowers. I’ll also share tips with you on how to capture these colorful beauties at their best as they emerge in other parts of the country this spring. Desert Blooms The deserts of Southern California…

I live at the edge of the woods in the Northern Sierra of California, and I’ve used cheap trail cameras to keep tabs on local wildlife for years. This particular bobcat has been a regular on my trail cams, and it was my inspiration for finally diving into DSLR camera trapping. Knowing that this cat was on my property regularly without ever showing itself for a “real” photo finally pushed me over the edge. I narrowed down the cat’s preferred path of travel to this log using trail cameras. My camera trap uses a Camtraptions passive infrared wireless trigger that was placed just out of frame on the left, perpendicular to the log. When it detects motion, it sends a “wake” signal to wireless receivers mounted on three separate Nikon…

Wildlife, nature and outdoor sports photographers should all take note, as Sigma has added yet another extremely versatile telephoto zoom to its arsenal of mirrorless lenses. The new Sigma 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports ($1,999) for Sony E-mount and L-mount full-frame mirrorless cameras is unique among Sigma’s existing telephoto zooms for mirrorless cameras—and, indeed, the full-frame mirrorless market as a whole—being the world’s only 10x optical zoom lens for full-frame mirrorless cameras. The new Sigma 60-600mm fits in alongside its 100-400mm DG DN Contemporary and 150-600mm DG DN Sports lenses as yet another option for a versatile telephoto zoom. Meanwhile, Tamron also has its selection of competitors (at least for E-mount systems), including a 100-400mm, a 150-600mm and a somewhat similar 50-400mm wide-ranging zoom lens. However, nothing so far…

Location Natural Bridge Recreation Area (not to be confused with Natural Bridge Park in Haleyville, Alabama) is located within the 181,230 acres of Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. It’s the oldest national forest recreation site in Alabama. Although not the largest natural bridge in the state, it certainly is the most scenic. The natural bridge itself can be accessed from a parking lot just a short distance away. A 0.38-mile paved trail leads down a steep incline to the natural bridge area. There’s also a very scenic 0.5-mile loop trail that goes around the recreation area. Weather Temperatures in north Alabama can reach as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer months and down to below freezing in the winter. The humidity can get extremely high in the summer…

As a photographer, I’m lucky to have come of age in photography at the very end of the film era. In college, I worked as a darkroom assistant and for several newspapers shooting sports with manual-focus prime lenses on super grainy black-and-white film. But it wasn’t too many years after college that I bought my first digital camera. As those of us “lucky” enough to have shot film know, while fun, film was a temperamental medium. Film was unforgiving, from scratched negatives and developing mistakes to minimal dynamic range and grain that would make today’s noise-adverse photographers cry. When you compare that to the abilities of today’s modern cameras, there’s no question we have it easy today. Any digital camera made in the last 10 years can easily blow away…

In this issue, we take a walk on the wild side with two main subjects that are similar in some ways but uniquely different in others. Both wildlife and wildflowers have “wild” in their names, which is one way to tie these two April issue themes together. Another is that photographing these subjects requires practice and patience. Anyone can take a photo of their cat or dog, but to shoot a sharp and compelling image of a wild animal is something else altogether. Similarly, it’s not hard to take a pretty picture of a flower in a curated garden, but to find and photograph flowers in the wild in an artful way requires persistence and a good eye. Our contributors to this month’s issue have persistence, great eyes and much…

Spending time in nature has always been deeply rooted in who I am. I feel at home in nature; I’m reenergized by the subtle smell of pine forests, the sound of a flowing creek, the way the seasons shift. I’m beyond lucky to have grown up in Wyoming, where wildness seems to be everywhere. As a young kid, I loved taking family drives into Yellowstone, fishing on mountain lakes and learning anything I could from nature. As I grew, my love of nature grew with me; in high school, I’d skip class to visit Yellowstone on opening day. Even though I was always surrounded by nature, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I even picked up a camera as a creative outlet, curious about capturing the wildness I…

Welcome to Part 4 of this article series on a modern approach to visualization and this series’ final installment. Picking up where I left off in Part 3, my hope is that the last article left you with a sense of freedom to explore an assortment of different developments in pursuit of your style as a photographer. Still, playing with different looks is just part of the process. What constitutes a well-developed image? What is a good developmental technique versus a bad one? Is there a formula? Truth be told, there are no right or wrong answers. I believe you’ll know a good development when you see it. My apologies for the nebulous answer, but I think it would be bad form to pretend to know the definitions of good…