Landscape photography from the field

Video Tutorials

Sharp Front to Back: How Focus Stacking Saved My Last Desert Shoot
Video Tutorials

Sharp Front to Back: How Focus Stacking Saved My Last Desert Shoot

Last month I was out in the high desert before sunrise, tripod planted in loose volcanic rock, trying to get a basalt formation in the foreground sharp alongside a ridge line sitting about two miles out. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that no single focal point was going to give me both. Physics doesn’t negotiate. So I shot a focus stack, came home, blended it in Photoshop, and walked away with an image I’d have thrown in the trash ten years ago out of frustration.

Why Your Sky Masks Look Fake (And the Lightroom Workaround That Finally Fixes It)
Video Tutorials

Why Your Sky Masks Look Fake (And the Lightroom Workaround That Finally Fixes It)

I spent last October shooting the Cascades during peak color. The light was doing everything right, the maples were on fire, and I came home with a set of frames I was genuinely excited about. Then I sat down to edit them and ran straight into the same wall I’ve been hitting for years: sky masks in Lightroom that looked clinical and wrong, with that telltale halo glowing along the ridgeline like a neon sign that says “this photo was edited by a computer.

The Art of Showing Up: What William Patino's Fiordland Workflow Taught Me About Getting Out of My Own Way
Video Tutorials

The Art of Showing Up: What William Patino's Fiordland Workflow Taught Me About Getting Out of My Own Way

I’ve been doing this long enough to know when I’ve slipped into a bad habit. A few weeks ago I packed up my gear, drove out to a location near Bend in the blue-dark before sunrise, and spent the whole shoot mentally editing images that hadn’t been taken yet. I was so busy previewing outcomes in my head that I nearly missed the light entirely. Came home with technically competent frames and absolutely nothing that moved me.

When Epic Stops Working: Rediscovering Quiet Light in the Field
Video Tutorials

When Epic Stops Working: Rediscovering Quiet Light in the Field

I came back from a week in the Columbia River Gorge last autumn feeling strangely flat. The light had been genuinely spectacular, the kind of dramatic side-light that stops you mid-stride. I came home with technically clean files, good compositions, images I could sell. But when I sat down at the desk to edit, nothing moved me. They looked like postcards. I had been there, and yet I wasn’t in a single frame.

Flash in Harsh Sunlight: Mastering Fill Light for Outdoor Portraits
Video Tutorials

Flash in Harsh Sunlight: Mastering Fill Light for Outdoor Portraits

I’ve stood in countless sun-drenched fields, squinting at LCD screens, watching my carefully composed portraits collapse under the weight of harsh shadows across my subject’s face. The midday sun is a merciless master, and for years I thought the answer was to find shade or wait for golden hour. But I was missing something fundamental about how light behaves, and how we can shape it. In this excellent tutorial, Joel Grimes shows us how to transform outdoor portraiture by harnessing flash—not as a primary light source, but as a subtle tool to fill shadows and reveal the dimensionality in our subjects.