Outdoor Photography Tips

These outdoor photography tips will help you take the best photos using natural outdoor light. Your digital camera can take beautiful outdoor photographs. You just have to know how to use it.

Close ups

Getting up close and personal with your subject also helps provide you with great outdoor photography. That's why I like to do macro photography outside. Seeing small aspects of nature closeup can really bring new prospective to your world. Check out my Macro Photography Tips page to find out more.

You can treat every outdoor picture you take as a portrait. I like taking portaits of trees. Finding the interesting shapes in the branches and focusing on those provides the eye with visual interest.

Landscapes

Landscape photos are the most common types of photos for people to take outside. Even when you're taking a picture of a vast area of land, it's best to have a focus. Try to focus on an interesting visual point in the landscape. It could be a patch of sky or a particular tree.

Outdoor Photography Tips Lighting

The sun can provide you with nice light for pictures, but you need to know where to place it to get the best pictures. Usually the sun should be behind you. This will cast a nice light on your subject. If you want to take a silhouette photo take the picture with the sun positioned in front of you. I do this a lot. I just like having the sun in my shots.

Sometimes natural sunlight can be a bit too harsh. This may cause dark shadows on your subject that decrease the quality of the shot. Most people don't think of using their flash on sunny days, but using your flash in this situation is a great way to fill darkly shadowed areas with light.

If you want to diffuse some of the harsh light of the sun, you can use an old white sheet. Tie the sheet up in a tree so that the sunlight is shining directly through the sheet before it hits your subject. This will soften the sometimes harsh look natural sunlight has and is great for taking outdoor portraits.

Don't have the sunlight you want. Overcast days can provide you with some interesting light too. Don't put your camera away just because there are a few clouds in the sky. Sunlight filtered through cloud cover gives your pictures a soft look.

Overcast days are also good days to experiment with black and white photography. The softened light matters less in black and white images.

Many beautiful and creative pictures can be taken outside in black and white. With all of the colors pulled out of the picture the eye focuses more easily on the shapes of the image. Look at some of the work of Ansel Adams. He took amazing black and white outdoor photography.

Tripod

The same rule applies for tripods as always have. If you can, it's best to use one. If you aren't taking a picture that requires a slow shutter speed, you can hand hold your camera, but even then it's best to use a tripod if you can.

I hope these outdoor photography tips gave you some ideas about how to improve your outdoor digital photography.

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