Long Exposure

Chasing the Southern Lights: A Practical Guide to Photographing the Aurora
Video Tutorials

Chasing the Southern Lights: A Practical Guide to Photographing the Aurora

There are photographs you plan for months and still miss, and then there are the ones that find you at 3 a.m. when you were supposed to be asleep. Aurora photography lives entirely in that second category. It rewards the prepared and punishes anyone who decides to call it a night too early. I’ve spent enough sleepless hours chasing the northern lights from the Pacific Northwest that I’ve built up opinions about what actually works out in the field, and when I came across this William Patino tutorial shot in Fiordland, New Zealand, I kept pausing it to take notes.

How to Shoot a Year's Worth of Keepers: Lessons from Thomas Heaton's Behind-the-Scenes Calendar Project
Video Tutorials

How to Shoot a Year's Worth of Keepers: Lessons from Thomas Heaton's Behind-the-Scenes Calendar Project

There’s a particular kind of pressure that comes with committing to a long-term photography project. I felt it when I challenged myself to shoot a “best of the year” collection for the first time - suddenly every outing felt like it either counted or didn’t, and I started second-guessing compositions I would have just shot freely before. What I needed wasn’t more gear advice. I needed to see how a working landscape photographer actually makes decisions in the field, across different locations, different seasons, different light.

Shutter Speed for Waterfalls and Seascapes: What I Learned From Mark Denney's Approach
Video Tutorials

Shutter Speed for Waterfalls and Seascapes: What I Learned From Mark Denney's Approach

I once spent four consecutive evenings at the same waterfall on a trip to Oregon, missing dinner every night, trying to nail one shot. The water looked either too frozen or too smooth, and I kept second-guessing myself at the dial. The problem wasn’t my gear or even my composition. It was that I hadn’t actually decided what I wanted the water to look like before I pressed the shutter. I was guessing, and it showed.

Blue Hour Photography: Why I'm Done Packing Up at Sunset
Video Tutorials

Blue Hour Photography: Why I'm Done Packing Up at Sunset

My Sunday photo walks used to follow the same script every week. Arrive before sunrise or stay through sunset, chase the color, pack up the second the sky went gray. I treated everything after golden hour like dead time, like the light had clocked out and there was nothing left worth shooting. I was wrong, and it took watching someone else deliberately stay out past sunset to finally shake that habit.

Long Exposure Photography Without a Tripod
Techniques

Long Exposure Photography Without a Tripod

Long exposure photography — those silky waterfalls, light trails, and dreamy motion blurs — typically requires a tripod. But what if you don’t have one with you? You can still get surprisingly good results with some technique and creative problem-solving. How Slow Can You Go Handheld? The traditional rule of thumb: your shutter speed should be at least 1/(focal length) to avoid camera shake. At 50mm, that means 1/50 second minimum.