Photography News

 

As winter approaches we're going to see many more days of rain but this shouldn't stop you taking photographs. Instead, use the weather to your advantage to capture great raindrop patterns on windows from the comfort of your home.

 

1. The Beauty Of Variety

You may not have noticed, but raindrops are not always the same on windows. If it's heavy rain the drops tend to be large and blobby after a short shower the droplets are much neater and the best sort to photograph. They look the type you'd see on a spiders web, all almost perfectly round. Droplets can also act like miniature lenses and present an upside-down image of the background in each concave shape. If you adjust focus you can make these images appear sharper to become part of the creative picture.  But that's another technique!

 

2. Gear Choices

All you need for this technique is a camera with close focus capabilities which covers most types of cameras including compacts. Ideally, the camera should have some form of creative exposure mode that will allow you to shoot at different apertures. It would also help if you had a tripod to steady the camera but this isn't a must as if you find your shutter speed is creeping towards the slow side, just use a slightly higher ISO.

 

3. The Set-Up

1. Choose a window that has interesting raindrop patterns and that is facing a plain background. The background should be a long way off so a window into a garden with trees, grass or a fence at a good distance is ideal. The choice of background can really make a difference; a light background such as a sky will often result in the droplets having a darker more defined outline while a dark background will make the centres of the droplets more prominent.

2. Make sure the window is clean! Any fingerprints or smears will show up. Double glazed windows should be in good condition free of condensation.

3. Set your camera up on a tripod and point it at the window. Make sure the camera back is parallel to the window for the best results.

4. Focus on the drops. You may have to use manual mode if your camera has it because the drops can sometimes confuse the focusing sensor so it misses them. On double glazing, some cameras may be fooled by the closer inner layer so manual focus is a really useful option.

5. Move the camera position to get the best range of drops in the frame and watch the background for change in tone. If there's an area where the tips of shrubs meet the lighter sky and that's in the photo it will spoil the result. Move either up so you just have sky or down so you just have shrubs as a backdrop.

6. Set an aperture to its widest setting so the background is thrown totally out of focus.  If you have a compact with no manual control but with scene modes, try taking pictures at different scene modes and compare the results to see if one throws the background out of focus. This will usually be something like portrait, food or close up mode, not landscape or infinity modes.

 

Check out more Close-up photography tutorials.

In early 1972, a Kansas State University professor named Nasir Ahmed sent the National Science Foundation a proposal to study a cosine transform built out of Chebyshev polynomials. NSF declined to fund it, and in his own written account of what happened, Ahmed recalled one reviewer's comment coming down to the whole idea seeming "too simple." That idea is the arithmetic sitting underneath essentially every JPEG in your catalog.

 

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I want to start by defending the thing this article might look like it is against.  Static posing in wedding and portrait photography is the backbone of every couples session I shoot. The five foundations I teach are all static positions, and they are static for good reasons. They are fast. They are repeatable. They are flattering on almost everybody. When you have ninety seconds before the coordinator waves you off, you reach for a static pose, and you should.

 

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A shelf full of older camera bodies brings its own kind of guilt: they still work, they still make good pictures, and they almost never leave the house. Choosing whether to keep shooting a camera like the Fujifilm X-H1 or sell it for something faster affects your wallet, your hit rate, and how much you enjoy the time you spend shooting.

 

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Finding a photograph inside a crowded street or a wide-open landscape is the part of the craft that decides whether you come home with a handful of keepers or a card full of near misses. Settings and gear can be learned in a weekend, while knowing where to point the camera takes years, and few people explain how to practice it.

 

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Two hours of loading sheet film at camp after a long day in the field can make large format feel like a job. How you handle the dull, repetitive parts of photography shapes how much you enjoy the rest of it, and often how the pictures turn out.

 

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Flat window light or a harsh shadow across a face used to mean a reshoot or an evening of dodging and burning. Photoshop's new Relight feature, currently in the beta, lets you reposition, soften, and recolor the light in a finished image with a handful of sliders.

 

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You don't have to head to a place that's bursting with beautiful landscapes to shoot some autumn-inspired shots as your own garden can give you just as many interesting autumn subjects to photograph. An even better reason to stay close to home is if the weather suddenly takes a turn for the worse you only have to take a few steps to be back in the warmth, you have your kettle close to hand and you can even continue shooting some subjects from inside your house.

  1. Leaves / Trees

 

You can't talk about photography in autumn without mentioning trees and leaves and it's a subject we'll be looking at a lot over the coming month so keep an eye out for tips on shooting macros, using backlight and much more with Autumn leaves. 
  2. Berries

 

If you have a few plants that give berries at this time of year, they should be ripe by now and ready to photograph. If they're a dark colour, try underexposing your shot slightly to deepen their shade and use a polarising filter to cut down on shine/reflections.
  3. Portraits

 

Kids wrapped up in hats and coats, particularly when they're throwing leaves around, scream autumn. Keep your shoot informal and try not to shoot too many posed shots. In fact, if you're photographing your own children playing around in your garden just leave them to it and shoot candids as they play.

If you don't want the colours of the foliage to take over the shot, longer focal lengths, particularly with a wide to moderate aperture, can help, blurring and giving your background a nice bokeh effect as well as flattering the features of who you're photographing. You can use out of focus foliage as a frame too, adding a spot of colour to the foreground of your autumn portrait shot.

Even though early morning and the later afternoon is a good time to shoot, autumn light tends to be lower all day so you can get away with shooting during the day if you need to.

 

4. Birds

 

Some birds begin to migrate at this time of year which means you may have new species of birds visiting your garden.

Birds are easily spooked so you need to keep still and if you can, be hidden. Try shooting from an open window from your house, set up in your shed or if you have one, use a hide. If you work from inside and are shooting through the glass rather than an open window, make sure your lens is as close to the glass as possible and turn your room lights off to minimise reflections. You also need to be in a position that's quite close to where the birds will land as even though you're using longer lenses, they are really tiny and can look lost among your background if you don't get close enough.

Some cameras can be controlled via a Smart Phone which means you can set the camera up in your garden and head back in to the warmth of the house where you can release the shutter remotely from. 

Make sure you pay particular attention to the tips of feathers, particularly on the tails, as these can easily become out of focus when trying to get the right balance between a blurred background and sharp subject. You may need to switch to manual focus, so you can set the focus point more precisely. Light at this time of year can be low so be prepared to switch your ISO up and remember to use a high enough shutter speed to keep your subject sharp. Most small garden birds move quickly and tend to twitch and turn their heads frequently so you need a quick enough shutter speed to stop the movement becoming blurred.

We have more tips on photographing birds in our technique section. 

 

5. Mushrooms

 

If you have any damp, dark areas in your garden or have a compost bin, you'll find fungi specimens are now springing up. You'll find more whole specimens in the morning but as you're in your garden it's quite easy for you to pop out at any time in search of photography-worthy mushrooms.

 

Quick tips for mushroom photos:

• As well as single specimens, capture mushrooms in an odd group which is more pleasing to the eye and adds interest to your shot
• Contrast white mushrooms with backgrounds of moss and leaves
• Blur backgrounds out of focus
• Look under the mushroom for interesting textures
• Light the underbelly by directing light into the scene with a reflector
• If using wider apertures, check your shot as your subject can end up with parts that are out of focus 

For more, have a look at this tutorial: Fungi Photography Tips.   

A 24mm lens at f/8 has an opening 3.00 mm across. A 600mm lens at f/8 has one 75 mm across, 25 times wider, and it draws a diffraction pattern on the sky 25 times finer. Both land a blur spot on your sensor exactly 10.7 microns wide.

 

Every other limit in photography has a price attached. Aberrations yield to better glass, noise yields to a bigger sensor, flare yields to better coatings. Diffraction yields to nothing, because it is not a property of your lens at all.

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As part of its ongoing efforts to make photo editing as quick and easy as possible, Adobe is introducing Prompt to Edit in Lightroom. This feature lets you restore an old photograph by selecting one of Adobe’s example prompts or creating your own prompt. You can sharpen out-of-focus images, colorize black-and-white photographs, and adjust the color of photos with a dramatic color cast.

  

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A wide angle lens pointed at a mountain range can make the peaks look small and far away, which is the opposite of what most people expect when they carry one into big terrain. Getting around that problem by getting close to something in front of you and building the frame back toward the peak is what turns a flat record of a view into an image that pulls the eye through it.

 

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A single speedlight sitting in your camera's hot shoe can produce portrait light that looks like it came from a big window or a softbox, as long as you know where to point it. Most people never get there, because direct flash looks harsh and the usual fix is a pile of domes, diffusers, and brackets that can cost more than the flash itself.

 

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Adobe now meters many of Photoshop's AI tools against a monthly pool of generative credits, so knowing which features draw from that pool directly affects how freely you can edit. Many of the program's most useful time-savers have nothing to do with AI at all, and they sit on panels you already open every day.

 

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Viltrox's AF 16mm f/1.8 is now available for L-mount, bringing a bright ultra-wide with a small info screen on its barrel to Panasonic, Leica, and Sigma bodies at a list price of $580. If you shoot night skies, tight interiors, or dim venues, a fast autofocus 16mm at that price gives you another way to gather light without leaning so hard on ISO.

 

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Here are 16 photography projects for you to tick off your photo list this Autumn. Think we've missed one? Add your suggestions in the comments. You can also find tips related to each subject by clicking on the headings. 

 

1. Autumn Wide-Angle Landscapes 

When the landscape is full of burnt oranges, warms yellows and other Autumnal shades, take advantage of this warm colour palette and capture some autumn-themed vistas with your wide-angle lens.

  2. Focus On A Single Tree This Autumn

When you've captured your shots of forests and national parks, focus your attention on one tree, shooting under the canopy or try using a lonely tree in a wide, sweeping landscape shot of a crop field. 

 

3. How To Photograph Abstracts

Instead of focusing on scenes as a whole, look for areas where you can strip your image back to shape, patterns and form which will give you an image that's still very much Autumn themed but it's different from the norm. Why not go against the rule that everything has to be sharp and create an Autumnal drag landscape? The warm shades of leaves which turn into long lines of colour help create striking pieces that are perfect for wall art. 

 

4. Top Tips On Photographing Reflections

Reflections are something you can shoot all year round but as bright colours and bold shapes make the most interesting reflections, autumn's the perfect season to try this technique.

 

  5. 10 Top Tips For Taking Better Photos Of Trees

When in the woods with your camera kit look upwards and capture a shot of the trees with a wide-angle lens. When you do, you'll produce a shot that looks as if the trunks of the trees are almost falling out of the image due to the effect wide-angle lens have on verticals and the trees will seem a lot taller, too. This technique can produce great results at all times of the year but when you have the orange tones set against a blue sky it's particularly eye-catching. 

You could also apply this technique in towns and cities where parks can be surrounded by tall modern structures that contrast well against the trees. 

 

6. Add An Interesting Sky

Use slower shutter speeds to turn the movement of the clouds to create leading lines to guide the eye through the photograph or how about waiting for a colourful sunset to compose your Autumn scene against? 

7. Play With Back Light

One way to exaggerate the colours of Autumn is with backlit leaves. Plus, it'll really make the intricate pattern of veins stand out and focus the viewer's attention. You can also shoot some Autumn themed outdoor portraits with backlight to make your subject 'pop' from the frame. 

  8. How To Photograph Fallen Leaves

Make the most of the fallen leaves starting to decorate the land and use them in your landscape shots. If you're working by water where leaves are decorating the land surrounding it or are floating along the surface of the water as it flows downstream, experiment with longer exposure times to blur the water's movement.

 

  9. Top Tips On Photographing Birds

Some birds begin to migrate at this time of year which means you may have new species visiting your garden.

 

10. Capture Photos of Dew Drops

As evening temperatures begin to fall the sight of morning dew decorating grass and other plants is something that will become a regular occurrence. As dew can add extra interest to your macro garden shots, it's well worth getting up early and taking some shots of morning dew. 

 

11. Shoot Sunbeams On Autumn Days

When you mix early morning fog with the rising sun you get a recipe for strong beams of sunlight appearing in woodland areas. These beams of light bursting through trees make an early morning rise from your bed covers well worth it.

 

12. Still Life Photography Can Be Autumn-Themed

Pumpkins, leaves, conkers and berries can all be used in still life set-ups when you're looking for something to keep you occupied on a rainy day. Play around with compositions, props and backgrounds to see what interesting still life creations you can create. 

 

 

13. Top Tips On Using Lens Flare Creatively 

 You can use flare in your shots to add a little romanticism, mystery and warmth to your autumn shots.

  14. Top Frost Photography Tips

The cooler evening temperatures and clear nights mean frost will soon be making an appearance once again and it's a great photographic subject for both landscape and macro photography fans. 

 

15. How To Use Paths And Roads In Your Photos

Paths, lines and long roads will always be excellent composition tools but when combined with lines of Autumnal trees your landscapes suddenly become even better. 

  16. Top Halloween Photography Tips 

As well as landscapes and close-up shots of leaves Autumn brings Halloween.  It's a perfect time to shoot some portraits and capture the other fun details of this event. 

   

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition  

In 1896, a woman settled into a chair in front of the fireplace in her Washington, D.C. studio, hiked her petticoats above the ankle, crossed her legs like a man, and aimed her own camera at herself. One hand held a lit cigarette. The other cradled a stein of beer. Her name was Frances Benjamin Johnston, and across a career of nearly fifty years she talked her way into the White House, boarded a warship in a foreign harbor, and became the first woman in America to earn a living pointing a camera at the news.

 

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‘Sexy Mantis’

© Diego Perez/Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

 

The 2026 finalists for the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards have been announced, chosen from more than 10,000 entries from 112 countries. The finalist images include a caiman wearing a wig, a handstanding leopard, a strutting white-tailed eagle and a polar bear appearing to chat with a seagull. The awards work with the Born Free Foundation to support wildlife conservation, and all entries must capture genuine moments, with no AI or digital manipulation permitted.

 

From Nikon:

 

Nikon is delighted to announce the highly anticipated finalists for the 2026 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards. This year’s shortlist features 40 Individual Finalists, 3 U16 Category Finalists, 4 Portfolio Category Finalists and 9 Video Category Finalists – a spectacular collection of mesmerising, feel-good and laugh-out-loud moments that celebrate the wonder of wildlife in all its glory.

Among the hilarious hopefuls vying for this year’s top prizes are a caiman wearing a wig, a handstanding leopard, a strutting white-tailed eagle, and a polar bear appearing to chat to a seagull. The 2026 competition has attracted more than 10,000 entries from 112 countries, the highest number in the Awards’ history.

Entrants are competing for an incredible line-up of prizes, including Nikon’s Z6III full-frame mirrorless camera, Z50II mirrorless camera and the Nikon ZR compact cinema camera. The overall winner will also embark on a once-in-a-lifetime safari with Alex Walker's Serian in the Masai Mara, while other prizes up for grabs include some of the best-selling photography rucksacks from ThinkTANK.

Founded in 2015 by professional photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks MBE and Tom Sullam, the Awards celebrate outstanding wildlife photography through the universal power of humour, while shining a light on the importance of protecting the wildlife and habitats our planet depends on. Authenticity remains at the heart of the competition, with all images capturing genuine moments in the wild and no AI or digital manipulation permitted.

Comedy Wildlife is once again delighted to be working with the Born Free Foundation, an international charity dedicated to rescuing and protecting wild animals from exploitation, while conserving threatened species and their natural habitats for generations to come. An inspiring mission which the Awards are proud to support.

Stefan Maier, Nikon Europe Senior General Manager Marketing says: “Nikon is proud to see the Comedy Wildlife Awards continue to grow in impact, with this year’s competition attracting more entries than ever before. With more than 10,000 hilarious and heartfelt images capturing the character and vibrancy of our natural world, the competition also pulls into focus the vital importance of conservation. Congratulations to all the finalists."

Tom Sullam, Comedy Wildlife Competition Co-founder says: “The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards started very gently, somewhere out on the vast plains of the Serengeti. What began as a small effort to raise awareness of wildlife conservation has grown into something far bigger than we ever imagined. The competition is now truly global, and a decade or so on, we want to make it even bigger, funnier, and more far-reaching than ever.  We use humour to get people to feel empathy towards wildlife, and it's that empathy that creates behavioural change for the better.”

The Overall Winner, Category and Highly Commended Winners will be announced on Tuesday 8th December at a dedicated awards evening in London. This will be followed by a one-week, free exhibition from 19th-13th December, where Nikon will showcase the 2026 Award Finalists at the Gallery@Oxo.

 

'The Secret Kiss'

© Jeetendra Chaware/Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

 

Competition categories include: 

• Alex Walker’s Serian Mammals Category 
• Spectrum Photo Birds Category 
• ThinkTANK Reptiles and Amphibians Category 
• Fish and Other Aquatic Species 
• Insects Category 
• Nikon Young Photographer (up to 25yrs.) 
• Nikon Junior Category (up to 16 yrs.) 
• Amazing Internet Portfolio Category 
• Nikon Video Category 

 

The Sterna’s People’s Choice Award will be open from 10th December until March 1st 2027 for the public to vote on their favourite.

This year’s shortlist will be reviewed by Nikon Creators Cameron Whitnall, Hannah Stitfall and Roxy Hemadani, alongside Nikon Ambassador Daisy Gilardini. New to the judging panel for 2026 are author and presenter Roma Wells, wildlife photographers Will Fortescue and Jamie Smart, and climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith. Completing this year’s expert line-up are TV presenter Kate Humble, actor and comedian Hugh Dennis, renowned wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas, and co-founder of the Born Free Foundation, Will Travers OBE.

For more information, please visit the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards website.

 

Retouch4me, a developer of AI-powered photo and video editing software, has released Retouch4me Lab, a color correction and visual effects application for the stage between RAW conversion and retouching. Retouch4me Lab brings every frame in a shoot to one consistent color baseline, then gives the photographer the tools to add their own style.

Color in post-production divides into two jobs: repairing the source and applying a style. Presets and LUTs deal with the style. The repair is the manual part, and it grows with the size of the shoot. The most frequent scenario is where lighting changes from frame to frame. Lab automates that stage across a full set of images.

Lab is built to produce color that looks finished. Under-saturated color is one of the signals that an image was left half-done, so the correction stays inside the range a professional would choose manually. Lab's neural networks learned from the work of professional photographers and retouchers, which holds the result to that standard on unfamiliar materials and across different camera systems.

An even baseline is also what makes a personal style transfer. A preset lands the same way across a shoot when the frames beneath it start from a similar place. Lab brings them there, so a photographer's own presets and LUTs behave consistently on every image.

 

Retouch4me Lab includes:

• AI color correction that evens out a full set of images automatically
• Basic correction: exposure, white balance and tone
• Color tools: HSL, curves and a color matrix
• Support for LUTs and saved styles
• Local masks for selective adjustments
• Three optical effects: halation, bloom and chromatic aberration
• An intensity control on every adjustment, with settings that carry from frame to frame

 

 

How Retouch4me Lab works:

• Control. Applying the automatic correction is optional, the automation offers a starting direction, and every adjustment has an intensity control.
• Processing. Retouch4me Lab runs locally on the photographer's computer, so image files stay on the machine.
• Workflow. Retouch4me Lab covers the color stage and works alongside RAW converters such as Adobe Lightroom and Capture One.
   

“In 2013 I built a color grid to simplify color correction for photographers, because every program I opened treated hue, saturation and luminosity as three separate sliders, when in a photograph they move together,” said Oleg Sharonov, co-founder of Retouch4me and creator of 3D LUT Creator. “Lab does that job with AI now, automating the base layer of color correction. It takes a raw shoot and brings every frame to a good starting point. I am looking forward to seeing it make color work simpler for photographers.”

Retouch4me Lab is available now at USD 145. A free demo is at https://retouch4.me/lab

 

About Retouch4me

Retouch4me is a software company that provides innovative solutions for photo and video editing. With neural networks, its software automates manual tasks and delivers natural results, allowing creatives to focus on their artistry. Retouch4me improves the workflows of creatives around the world. Discover how to elevate yours at https://retouch4.me/

 

When this tripod came out years ago, so many of us wanted it to the point that a lot of us forced it to be useful in situations where it wasn’t the best fit. Now that we’ve seen the brand’s other tripod offerings, where it fits best is more obvious.

 

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The Nikon ZR puts RED's raw video format, 32-bit float audio, and a 4-inch screen into a body with no viewfinder, so most of the conversation around it stays on codecs and cinema workflows. If you shoot both stills and video, the more useful question is whether it's a camera you'd pick up on a day when there's nothing to film.

 

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