Photo Tips

Long exposure photography means keeping the shutter open long enough that anything moving turns into a smooth blur while everything still stays sharp. Put your camera on a tripod, set your aperture around f/8 to f/11 for full depth, and choose the shutter speed by subject: about 1/4 to 1 second for waterfalls, depending on how much water they hold, 1/2 second for waves and rivers, 30 seconds and longer for a glass-smooth sea and for clouds. In daylight you will need an ND fil

To photograph the northern lights, put your camera on a tripod, switch to manual mode and start with your widest aperture (f/1.8 to f/2.8) and an exposure of 2 to 10 seconds. Focus manually on a bright star, shoot RAW, and shorten the exposure the faster the aurora moves. That is the whole recipe. What makes the difference between a sharp, detailed aurora and a soft green flow is how you adjust your shutter speed during the night. This guide covers the settings for different

The best time to photograph sand dunes is the first 60 to 90 minutes after sunrise and the last hour before sunset, when low side light turns every ridge into a sharp line between orange and shadow. Start with ISO 100, f/8 to f/11 and a shutter speed of 1/250 s or faster, meter for the lit side of the dune, and let the shadows fall to near black. Midday light flattens dunes into a bright, featureless slope. That is the single biggest mistake we see. The rest of this guide cov

Guided or self-guided photo tour? A look at how each format teaches you, from live coaching to planned routes with video lessons.