Give your patterned sofa a timeless, not trendy, appeal

There are several reasons why your outdoor photographs may be far less compelling than possible. Perhaps your images lack uniqueness and don’t stand out from the crowd. Or maybe they’re short on impact for reasons that are easy to correct by changing the approach you take in the field.

In either case, this video from Danish pro Mads Peter Iversen reveals several of the secrets responsible for his spectacular work. By following his advice you’ll be able to capture stunning landscape photos under a wide variety of situations and conditions. Iversen is known for informative and inspirational tutorials, and this 15-minute lesson is no exception.

Iversen illustrates his tips with stunning images that will jumpstart your creative vision and make his recommendations easy to understand. His first tip is one you may have heard before, but it bears repeating: “The one thing that I find to be the most important and trumps everything else is to be at the right place at the right time, with the camera pointed in the right direction.”

As you’ll see, weather conditions are another important consideration that can sometimes overcome harsh midday light if you employ the techniques that Iversen reveals. There’s also a discussion of gear, specifically lenses, and Iversen demonstrates how a thoughtful change in focal length can make a significant difference in how your images are perceived.

Iversen typically ignores “normal” lenses and prefers shooting at the extremes—with wide lenses or telephotos depending upon the specific scene at hand. He also reveals a number of techniques for dynamic composition with unique angles and perspectives than can also boost the impact of a shot.

Appropriate camera settings can also make a big difference for exposure effects and focus-point techniques that increase detail and provide optimum depth of field. Another of his tips involves adding interest by shooting with a “sense of scale” in mind.

At this point you’re only halfway through this eye-opening episode and Iversen demonstrates several other foolproof methods for capturing “in-your-face” landscape photos in the camera. Be sure to visit his instructional YouTube channel and explore what else is available for upping your game.

And don’t miss the earlier tutorial we featured with another accomplished pro who demonstrates how he shoots and edits “high key” landscape photographs for a captivating effect.

So what in the heck are bokeh lights? The term bokeh describes an eye-catching effect that’s achieved by shooting with a fast lens at maximum aperture to create soft-out-of-focus backgrounds that accentuate the main subject in an image. It powerful method that can be employed at any time of day.

In this tutorial from the Blue Lightning YouTube channel you’ll learn a subset of this technique for editing photos captured after dark when there are small light sources in a scene like streetlamps, neon signs, illuminated windows, and reflections. The workflow is super easy to master for Photoshop users of all skill levels.

Instructor Martin Geller is a highly successful creator and post-processing specialist whose clients have included ad agencies, national TV networks, major magazines, and book publishers. Today’s episode explains everything necessary for adding soft, romantic bokeh lights to the background of a photo, and you’ll learn how it’s done in barely four minutes.

Geller’s demonstration shot is a beautiful environmental portrait of a bride, captured at night on an illuminated street. The photo is perfectly exposed and nicely composed, but the lights behind the subject are rendered so sharp that there’s no real separation between foreground and background. You can download the file with a link beneath the video and follow along as the adjustments are explained.

According to Geller, the results you achieve will look best with photos that have dark backgrounds and pointed light sources. The edit begins by creating two copies of the original shot, using keyboard shortcuts to speed up the process. Then choose Photoshop’s Quick Selection tool and click on the Select Subject button.

Geller illustrates how to check the accuracy of the selection you made by pressing “Q” on your keyboard. If any areas were missed, simply click on “Q” once again and refine the selection by following Geller’s instructions.

The rest of the process is so quick and easy that we’ll let Geller demonstrate how it works. Then compare his before/after images and you’ll be duly impressed. There’s much more to learn on the popular Blue Lightning YouTube channel and you’ll definitely want to take a look.

We also recommend watching a tutorial we featured with another expert who provides a post-processing beginners guide to exposure blending for photographs with perfect exposure every time.

As I was going through the pains of reducing my photo storage, it was a fun experience to go back to my early work and see if there was anything worth keeping. While deleting a large collection of panoramic images, I found a couple that I ended up saving. Interestingly, I realized that at the time I was taking these photos, Lightroom had no panorama capabilities to create a single DNG image out of RAW shots (I used PTGui and Photoshop at the time). So I selected a few vertical panoramic shots captured at different shutter speeds (obviously, I had no idea how to capture panoramas at the time) and let Lightroom do its magic.