By Justin Black   One of the first things people ask when they see that we are going to 17,585 feet elevation on our June 2018 trip to Ladakh in the Indian Himalaya is, “How do you deal with the elevation?” It raises a serious issue, but one with which we have successfully dealt on […]

By Charles Cramer Photoshop Technique – Cloning in Darken Mode This is a technique that I’ve used for years, but I’ve just learned a new wrinkle!  Above is a  photograph I made of some trees in Yosemite. In the upper part of image, you can see a slight problem—the sky peeking through the leaves is […]

by John Shaw How does one coordinate Lightroom used on a laptop when traveling, with a master Lightroom catalog back in the office?  I’ve written about this before, but the topic keeps coming up at workshops and on tours, so…. I have one main master Lightroom catalog for all my images, which resides on my desktop […]

By John Shaw In my photography I use Aperture Priority metering most of the time.  I take a shot, look at the histogram, and use Exposure Compensation (EC) to add or subtract light as needed.  Yes, this works great most of the time…but most of the time does not mean all of the time.  There are shooting situations […]

You may already be aware of the prestigious Nature’s Best / Windland Smith Rice Photography Awards, featuring an exhibit of winning photographs at the Smithsonian each year. We are pleased to announce that Visionary Wild instructor Lou Coetzer has collaborated with Nature’s Best to create a new annual competition focusing entirely on subjects from the […]

By Justin Black There is a good chance that the gear question I hear more than any other is, “If I were to buy just one tilt-shift lens, which one should I get?” Unfortunately, the question begs another: “What do you want to do with it?”  There is no “best” tilt-shift lens, and no dominant […]

Amateur and professional photographers alike are constantly seeking elegant solutions to display their best work online. We are excited to announce that our friends at Paupress have launched Justin, a new e-commerce enabled website solution for photographers, and indeed all visual artists. Click here to check it out. In its most basic form, Justin is a WordPress theme […]

by John Shaw 1.  To tone down the whites in an image, select them using Color Range.  Add any adjustment layer, and change the layer blending mode to either Multiply or the slightly stronger Linear Burn.  Then drop the layer opacity to taste. 2.  When shooting frames for a panoramic, manually setting camera exposure is more precise than using an […]

Our friends at Hunt’s Photo Video and Ilford are sponsoring a free webinar on fine print making, Join the Live Video Broadcast on March 29, 2013 at 1:00pm EDT What are the aspects and qualities that make for a Gallery-Quality Fine Art Print? Exacting color, smooth tonal transitions, a well-balanced contrast range and the best […]

by John Shaw Editor’s note: There’s a lot of photo-mythology floating around out there. Visionary Wild instructor John Shaw puts a few of his favorite myths to rest. 1.  Images for the web should be sized at 72 dpi.  First of all, “dpi” refers to dots per inch, and computer screens have pixels, not “dots.”  But “72 […]

The November 2011 issue of Outdoor Photographer magazine features an article by Justin Black about ways to add greater meaning and purpose to your photography. You can read the full text and see the accompanying photos here: Photographing with Purpose by Justin Black

“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard of his time with the 1910 Scott expedition to the South Pole. And that’s how most of us still imagine polar expeditions: stolid men with ice riming their beards drawing sledges and […]

by Justin Black   The lone-wolf photographer is a concept with which we are all familiar. Many of us like to think of ourselves as self-reliant and passionately free-spirited, driven only by an innate creative vision. In my experience, however, most of the people I know who have mastered anything haven’t done it on their […]

by Justin Black   The Dragon rippled as I slid the kayak out into the swamp’s caramel-brown water. The still quiet of pre-dawn was broken only by the song of a prothonotary warbler, a croaking bullfrog, the sudden splash of a jumping sunfish. Gliding along on the glassy surface past lush swamp plants – arrow […]