Six Practical Drone Tips to Get Better Landscape Photos

My first foray into aerial photography using a drone left a lot to be desired, to say the least. The DJI Phantom 2 Vision that I first used back in 2014 was a chunky, clunky beast with photo and video capabilities that pale in comparison to today’s offerings. In other words, using that drone for photo and video purposes was more of a novelty or a cool party trick.

It really wasn’t until I got the Mavic 2 Pro in 2018 that I realized just how much creative potential these maturing aerial camera systems offer. All of a sudden, I was able to reliably capture images and footage in entirely unique perspectives that were utterly impossible to get from the ground.

When DJI recently announced the Mavic 3, I wasn’t sure how much more the company could improve on because I genuinely believed that the Mavic 2 Pro checked off so many boxes for me. Unfortunately, my Mavic 2 Pro crashed into Lake Coeur d’Alene last December (I had it recovered by a professional diver, though) and I opted to wait until DJI replaced it with the Mavic 3 almost a year later. After receiving it and taking it up for its maiden flight, I can confidently say that all of my expectations have been shattered.

Another thing I realized after taking this drone up for the first time in a year is that I had forgotten so much of what is involved with getting strong photos when your camera is hovering way up in the air. Traditionally, photographers just need to keep their concentration wrapped on the key aspects of a photo such as the composition and exposure settings. When your camera is hovering hundreds of feet in the air, an entirely new set of data needs to be constantly monitored in addition to having greater control over the Z-axis.

That’s a big reason why I chose to record the video above. The tips I share to help get stronger aerial compositions that serve to help me just as much as I hope it helps you. It’s sort of my own little pep talk to myself, reminding me of the things that matter most when I’ve only got 25-30 minutes of total flight time. If you’ve never flown a drone before, I hope this video inspires you to give it a shot. It really is one of the most rewarding forms of photography. Just remember to be a good human and follow all local, state, and federal laws regarding drone operation. And always be mindful to not disrupt or scare wildlife in their natural habitats.

About the author: Brian Matiash is a professional photographer, videographer, and published author based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His passion is to serve other photographers by helping them grow their own visual pursuits. Learn more about Brian by visiting his website, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

#tips #travel #abstractlandscapephotography #aerial #aerialdrone #brianmatiash #djimavic3 #drone #dronephotography #fineartlandscapephotography #landscape #landscapephotography

How to Simulate Long Exposure with an iPhone Without ND Filters

Right off the bat, I’m going to add the disclaimer that this tutorial will probably not be for every type of photographer out there. If you have no interest in exploring the creative opportunities that mobile photography offers, then this video may not be for you.

But , I’d like to challenge you to at least consider it because mobile photography really has come such a long way over the years -- and I’m not advocating that you should replace your camera gear with a smartphone camera.

However, I am advocating those who have been closed off to it, to approach this with an open mind because there are so many fun photographic things that you can do these days with your smartphone camera. Here are two photos that were recently taken with my iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Spectre app (which I’ll share more about in the next paragraph). I imported both photos into Lightroom mobile and edited them on the fly. I mean, that’s just such a cool workflow to have at your disposal, right?

Speaking of photography workflow apps, one of my favorites is called Spectre, made by the same folks who develop the outstanding Halide camera app. It is important to note that both apps only work in Apple’s iOS and iPadOS ecosystems, but I suspect that there are some Android equivalent apps.

Spectre allows you to take simulated long exposure photos using three different shutter speeds: three seconds, five seconds, and nine seconds. What is more impressive is that you can get these photos without having to use an ND filter and the exposures won’t get blown out. The functionality is similar to what you can achieve when recording Live Photos in Apple’s own camera app, but the Spectre interface is much more robust and functional.

With that said, a lot of the real fun happens when you marry creating these mobile photos with the power of desktop apps like Adobe Photoshop. Suddenly, you have access to an arsenal of ridiculously powerful tools that aren’t currently available on mobile devices, or they’re not close to being equivalent in terms of performance, and that’s what the above video is all about.

I wanted to explore a start-to-finish long exposure workflow that starts with my phone (I’ve since upgraded to the iPhone 13 Pro Max) and ends in Adobe Photoshop on my laptop. I’m not necessarily trying to convince anyone, but I’d ask you to keep an open mind. I think the results are really impressive and I’m very curious to hear other photographers' thoughts on it.

About the author: Brian Matiash is a professional photographer, videographer, and published author based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His passion is to serve other photographers by helping them grow their own visual pursuits. Learn more about Brian by visiting his website, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

#educational #mobile #tips #tutorials #brianmatiash #daytimelongexposure #halide #iphone #iphone13pro #iphonephotography #landscapephotography #landscapephotographytutorial #longexposure #photographyapp #spectre

Understanding the ‘Intersect’ Function of Lightroom’s New Masking Tools

It’s not often that a new Lightroom update or feature is as positively received by users as last week’s Masking improvements. And there's a good reason for the fanfare because these new tools really are amazing… as well as a bit confusing and inconsistent.

They are confusing because of a new layer of logic that Lightroom users can apply when determining exactly where you want to edit within a selection, by using combinations of the “Add” and “Subtract” functions within each mask. You can take it a step further by using the “Intersect” function to refine your selection, which seems to be causing a lot of confusion.

Furthermore, these masking tools are also inconsistent because you won’t find any trace of the Intersect menu item in the newer Lightroom Desktop or Lightroom Mobile, although you can absolutely achieve the exact same functionality in both apps. You’ll only find the Intersect option in Lightroom Classic when you click on the ellipse (…) next to a mask.

Fortunately, all Lightroom users can benefit from this especially powerful tool regardless of which version you prefer. If you’re using Lightroom Desktop or Mobile, the way to replicate the Intersect function is to make your initial selection, then click Subtract, make your secondary selection, and finally click on Invert.

The way I approach explaining Intersect is as follows: your initial selection—whether it’s made using the Select Subject/Sky options or any of the existing selection tools—determines the What of your localized edit. Using Intersect takes it a step further by allowing you to specify Where in your initial selection you want to edit by combining it with a secondary selection. To illustrate this, check out the GIF below. I made my initial selection by using Select Subject. That is the What in terms of my localized edit. Next, I determined Where I want to refine my edit by using the Intersect tool with a Linear Gradient mask.

The new Intersect tool is undoubtedly one of the headier tools within the entire Lightroom ecosystem, but it’s also one of the most powerful if you’re into localized editing. Once you’re able to wrap your head around how to use it effectively, it’ll open up all sorts of creative opportunities to make precise edits to targeted areas within your photos.

About the author: Brian Matiash is a professional photographer, videographer, and published author based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His passion is to serve other photographers by helping them grow their own visual pursuits. Learn more about Brian by visiting his website, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

#educational #tips #tutorials #adobe #adobelightroom #adobelightroomclassic #ai #aimasking #brianmatiash #edicuation #intersectfeature #lightroom #lightroomclassic #masking #tutorial

How to Leverage Lightroom’s New Masking Tools in Your Workflow

Unless you’ve just emerged from a nuclear fallout bunker, you’ve likely already heard about Lightroom’s impressive new masking tools that Adobe announced at their annual Adobe Max conference. In fact, PetaPixel’s Ryan Mense wrote a wonderful hands-on article covering the expanse of these new masking tools.

My goal for this workflow video is to approach these tools from a practical perspective, without getting mired in some of the more technical aspects of these powerful technologies. It’s not that they are not important or worth knowing. I love nerding out about the intersection of AI and photo editing. But, I also understand that there are many photographers who are simply interested in seeing how these new tools work in a way that would be most applicable within their own post-processing workflows.

The Power of AI-Driven Masking

At a high level, the two most important updates to Lightroom’s selective editing are:

The use of AI to intelligently select the sky and subject(s) in your composition and

The way that you can have multiple selections, or masks, interact with each other by using the Add, Subtract, Invert, and Intersect tools.

In my opinion, these two updates are some of the most significant to come to Lightroom since localized edits were introduced back in 2008 with Lightroom v2. At the risk of gushing, I cannot overstate how much flexibility this new local editing workflow offers photographers. Fine-edged selections that used to take several minutes to refine now occur within 1-2 seconds (at least on my M1 Macbook Air). And with the quasi-logic of the Add and Subtract tools, I can further target the specific areas of my photo that I want to selectively edit.

Unsung heroes

It’s important to also bring up a few other notable updates to Lightroom that may have been lost in all the fanfare. Notably, the “New Coke” version of Lightroom finally got the powerful Color, Luminance, and Depth Range masking tools that Lightroom Classic users have enjoyed for a few years now. As a Lightroom CC user, I cannot begin to express how happy I am to have access to these tools.

And as if mobile photo editing hadn’t been impressive enough with Lightroom iOS/Android, just about all of these new masking tools have made their way to this on-the-go platform. Which, when you take a moment to think about, is truly amazing. Imagine being able to make these fine-tuned edits on your phone.

Onto the workflow video!

Ok, enough gushing. I promised you a workflow video and here it is. Again, my goal for this video was to show you some creative ways to leverage these new masking tools to quickly achieve precise edits. In fact, in some of the photos, 100% of my edits were made using local adjustments with these new masking tools.

I am also working on a few add-on videos that showcase how well these tools sync across devices (start on your phone and finish up on your desktop), as well as how to use the Invert and Intersect masking options. I hope this video helps inspire you to try out these amazing new tools.

About the author: Brian Matiash is a professional photographer, videographer, and published author based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His passion is to serve other photographers by helping them grow their own visual pursuits. Learn more about Brian by visiting his website, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

#educational #software #tips #tutorials #adobe #adobelightroom #adobelightroomclassic #ai #aimasking #brianmatiash #lightroom #lightroomclassic #masking

Add Impact to Your Photos with Free Transform in Adobe Photoshop

Beautiful vistas and landscapes require very little in the way of adjectives when enjoyed in person, but trying to convey that majesty to someone through photos is a lot more challenging. Most of the time, a photo just doesn't really capture the awe-inspiring nature of reality.

Have you ever tried describing a truly grandiose landscape scene to a friend or family member? You probably used a full-on medley of colorful adjectives such as "gigantic," "massive," and the crowd favorite, "epic." Still, you can see that your words aren't having the effect that you'd hope, so you grab your phone to show a photo of the landscape scene that you took. But, even with this visual aid, the photo on your phone (or computer screen) fails to live up to the image that you have in your mind. Your mind is filled with romanticized memories of mountains with peaks that scrape the sky and vistas that sprawl out as far as the eye can see. But, the photo on your phone just isn’t matching up.

In other words, your landscape photo fails to convey the impact -- the size and presence -- of your subject the way it did when you were standing there. This happens to me many times, especially when I'm using wider focal lengths, but it has also occurred when I had used telephoto focal lengths. To sum it up, these photos lack the impact required to properly and faithfully convey the grandeur of the scene you captured and it can take away from the overall feel.

This is especially common with my photos that have mountain ranges in the distance. In my memory -- and in reality -- these mountains are massive. But, when I look at them in my photos, they look underwhelming. Without going into too much detail, much of this has to do with your focal length and the distance of your camera relative to your subject and background. At wider focal lengths, gigantic mountains can appear to be relatively small and unimpressive.

Fortunately, there are some easy and quick ways to restore some of that visual impact without making the shot look unrealistic. In this video, I'll show you three examples of how to restore impact using one tool in Adobe Photoshop: Free Transform. While this isn't the silver bullet for every type of photo that lacks impact, it can yield some truly impressive results in the right circumstance.

About the author: Brian Matiash is a professional photographer, videographer, and published author based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His passion is to serve other photographers by helping them grow their own visual pursuits. Learn more about Brian by visiting his website, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

#tips #tutorials #adobephotoshop #brianmatiash #fineart #fineartphotography #freetransform #landscape #landscapephotography #photoediting #photoshop #postproduction #visualimpact

How To Focus Stack the Right Way For Landscape Photography

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've lost a shot because I didn't think through the basics well enough. I would of course have my composition and exposure settings dialed in and with that determined, you would think that I have what I needed to get the shot. But, in some cases, that just isn’t enough.

In those cases, I have missed the shot because I didn’t have proper focus throughout the photo from the foreground all the way through the background. And the thing is, it is not that I missed focus in the conventional sense of the phrase. That is to say, it’s not as if the photo was out of focus altogether. Whichever area I decided to focus on at the time was perfectly sharp, but the rest of the image was soft and that, in my opinioin, ended up ruining the photo.

In other words, I got my photo most of the way there, but not all the way.

A big reason for that is because I neglected to focus stack when I should have known better. I think a lot of us who are familiar with focus stacking don't use it because it simply may not occur to us to do so for this kind of photo. I know that has happened to me many times. I just forget about it or don’t even think to consider it. Other times, I make the assumption that I’ve got my shot dialed in to the point where I don’t need to focus stack, and am proved incorrect when I review the photo later.

And the thing is that there really isn’t that much extra effort that’s required to get focus brackets. It just requires a bit of discipline and foresight.

It also not enough to know how to do it, but also just as important to know why you should focus stack and when you need to apply the technique. Most focus-stacking tutorial videos start you off already in front of your computer, which is helpful to a degree. But I wanted to take you to the beginning of the process and show you what I do at the composition phase with my camera in the field. I also think it’s important to know how to manually focus stack in Photoshop when its auto-align feature fails (which can happen). Despite the extra effort, I wholeheartedly believe that focus stacking is an integral tool that every landscape photographer should know about.

About the author: Brian Matiash is a professional photographer, videographer, and published author based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His passion is to serve other photographers by helping them grow their own visual pursuits. Learn more about Brian by visiting his website, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

#tips #tutorials #adobephotoshop #brianmatiash #composition #focus #focusstacked #focusstacking #landscape #landscapephotography #photoshop #tutorial