There are a number of things that can improve your images while in the field and during post-processing of your files. Not every situation will allow you to use all of these suggestions and in many situations you will find it hard to use only a few of them. Most of this applies towards photographing still images where you have time to setup the shot.

Online stock photography websites have grown in the last few years as one of the easiest ways that photographers can get into to make a few extra bucks. Because of this, the competition is getting pretty fierce. The large stock photography sites now have several million photos online and they can be downloaded for just very cheap sometimes less than a dollar for a photograph.

I’ve been looking into learning more about real estate photography which is a whole other animal from landscape photography. One common practice is exposure blending (HDR) which I used in this shot of my kitchen.

To get this shot I metered the brightest point and the darkest point and then shot in 2 stop intervals to get a series of images that I could use for exposure blending. The software I used to blend the images was Photomatix which I think does a better job than Photoshop for this purpose.

Because of the recent time change for daylight savings time getting up in the morning to catch the sunrise just got an hour earlier. Arriving at Clingman’s Dome before 7am and an hour and a half drive meant getting up pretty early in the morning. I didn’t have a lot of time this weekend so I only spent about 40 minutes at Clingman’s Dome.

Clingmans Dome is one of the most popular spots in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and for good reason: the view is spectacular. A good time to be there is before sunrise. The fog rolls over the mountains as the sun comes up creating an amazing scene. My first visit to Clingmans Dome was a good one as I walked away with over 150 shots to sift through later with a good number of keepers.

This past week I had the chance to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park once again during its most popular time of year. The leaves are beginning to change especially in the higher altitudes which make for fantastic photo opportunities. For this trip I decided to take a hike on Alum Cave Trail. As one of the most popular trails in the park, the trail was quite busy. The hike can be fairly strenuous in parts which makes it surprising that it is so popular.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has hundreds of miles of hiking trails with never ending photographic opportunities. For this trip I visited Chimney Tops Trail which is only a few miles from Gatlinburg. Chimney Tops Trail is a moderately strenuous hike and is about 2 miles to the summit of Chimney Tops. While I didn’t reach the summit on this trip, there was plenty to see and photograph.

A typical landscape scene can easily have a range of 10 stops or more. But with modern digital cameras, we can only capture around 8 stops. And when we go to print, we are further reduced to about 5 stops. The rule of thumb for shooting a scene with a high dynamic range is to “expose for the highlights and let the the shadows take care of themselves.” This works fine, but by the time we go to print, we’ve tried to compress this 10 stop scene into 5 stops. What ends up happening is we lose contrast.

If you own a Canon EOS Digital Rebel series camera, you can save a little money by building your own remote shutter release cable with a few spare parts from Radio Shack. Some of the parts, and at least the tools you should have already. If you don’t already have some of these things, you may not save yourself much money by building your own since they are not all that expensive to buy anyways. However, the wireless ones only work from in front of the camera, and the corded one only has a 18″ cord. By building your own, you can make the cord as long as you want. Mine has a cord about 36″ long.

People occasionally ask what kind of equipment I use to take my photographs when I’m out in the field. Obviously, a camera is required, but to get the most productivity there is a lot more that goes into making a good photograph than just a camera.

Most of the time I carry a backpack with me that has the necessities. Below is a picture of the bag, what is in it, and how it is organized.