Most photographers know that Blue Hour and Golden Hour are great times to shoot because of the gorgeous colors at the beginning and end of the day. Last week we explained how to turn a dull landscape shot into a beautiful sunset image in Lightroom, and today you’ll learn a technique for making a boring Blue Hour photo jump off the page.

Instructor Serge Ramelli is an acclaimed French pro living in the U.S. who specializes in landscape and cityscape imagery. He just returned from a three-month trip photographing the streets of Paris, and this episode is all about using Lightroom to capture the light fantastic in the early morning.

Ramelli’s demonstration image was made from a high terrace at a new hotel in the City of Lights and it’s nothing very special, even though he was ready to go in time for Blue Hour. But watch what happens when he applies his “natural drama” technique to transform the photo into a spectacular, sparkling money shot.

The image is really dark so Ramelli zooms in and opens up the shadows to check focus and see exactly what’s going on within the frame. The hotel doesn’t permit tripods, so he had to shoot handheld at ISO 800. He begins the reclamation project with Lightroom’s new Enhance tool that has a powerful Denoise feature that works on the Raw level.

When shooting without a camera support in dim conditions, Ramelli suggests opening the aperture as wide as possible and using your camera’s self-timer to trip the shutter to avoid camera shake while holding the camera as steady as possible. Choosing ISO is the last setting he makes, because that’s determined by the f/stop selected and the slowest shutter speed you’re comfortable with given the effectiveness of your camera’s image-stabilization system.

Turning back to Lightroom, Ramelli opens the shadows and brings down the highlights which temporarily gives the photo a “weird HDR look.” He then crushes the blacks  and opens the whites to enhance contrast. Now things are looking much better. The next step involves careful cropping to improve composition.

Ramelli moves on to other straightforward adjustments, first to deal with the overly bright sky. Next, he adjusts White Balance for better colors, and he explains the various options available in the panel. You’ll see how adding a bit more yellow and magenta makes a significant difference.

Not satisfied with the position of the Eiffel Tower, Ramelli crops the image further with the Rule of Thirds in mind. At this point many of us would be very pleased with the image. Ramelli is a perfectionist, however, so he demonstrates a few more enhancements to complete the impressive transformation.

You can find more powerful editing tips on Ramelli’s popular YouTube channel, so be sure to take a look.

And don’t miss the tutorial mentioned above, explaining how turn a dull landscape photo into a gorgeous Golden Hour shot with a little help from Lightroom.

We all learn a bunch of “essential” photography rules when first starting out, and even more as we continue to expand our skills. One of the most familiar is the Rules of Thirds. Today you’ll learn how to use the less familiar Rule of Odds, that can be even more beneficial when shooting wildlife and nature images.

Instructor Waseh Ahmad is a budding pro, specializing in nature and urban  photography who regularly posts straightforward tutorials as he pursues his craft. In this episode he demonstrates the power of composing scenes with odd-numbered elements in the frame.

Ahmad provides a simple explanation for this oft-ignored guideline, explains how to use it for more compelling photos He also discusses situations in which you should break the rule. In basic terms, the Rule of Odds can improve composition by breaking up the symmetry of a shot, thereby adding interest and eye-catching graphic tension.

He illustrates the concept with four circles in a straight line and divides the graphic down the middle with two circles on either side of center. Ahmad explains that with this type of composition, “there’s no place where the attention will be drawn.” But when you add a fifth circle in the middle the image retains a form of symmetry, but now the eye has a place to go.

Now that you understand why odd-numbered elements can draw attention  to a specific subject, Ahmad has several nuances to impart for using this rule in practical ways when shooting in the field. One key point is that the concept of oddness is has to do with human perception, and you don’t always need an uneven number of objects to make the rule work, depending upon how the objects are grouped

One good example is a group of several people tightly clustered together with other elements elsewhere in the frame. In this case, the tightly packed group is actually perceived as a single element among the others. Ahmad then provides several of his photos to illustrate how this works.

Another way to employ this effective guideline is to use strong variations in brightness or contrasting colors as “elements” within a scene, rather than actual physical physical objects like people, animals, or trees, to create an odd-numbered arrangement that grabs attention.

Waseh has a few other suggestions for employing the Rules of Odds, and when you try this approach you may be surprised how effective it is. You can find more helpful tips and tricks by visiting his interesting YouTube channel.

We also suggest watching the tutorial we posed earlier from another successful outdoor photographer, explaining several ommon landscape photo mistakes and how to avoid them.

Dodging and burning is a popular editing technique used by landscape photographers to balance the tones in an image. While commonly accomplished with Photoshop, you’ll learn how to get the job done in Lightroom by watching this tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel.

This method enables you to selectively adjust the exposure in different portions of an image—thereby lightening darks areas, and darkening areas that are too bright. You can also take the opposite approach in certain situations where you want to further brighten light areas and make shadows even darker.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is an acclaimed German landscape photographer and we suggest you download his demonstration image using the link beneath the video so you can follow along and make the changes yourself as they’re explained. He begins with a few global adjustments to prepare a base image for the dodging and burning that follows.

Mohrle changes the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Standard, thereby lessening overall contrast and providing more control for subsequent adjustments. The next step is slightly increasing exposure to pull more details out of the shadows. Mohrle likewise drops highlights to increase details in the bright sky and adjusts both the blacks and the whites.

Before turning to the meat of this lesson Mohrle adds a bit of Clarity and Dehaze, and slightly pumps of Vibrance for more base saturation. Now the image has more punch with stronger colors. Effective dodging and burning is all about carefully targeting specific areas, and Mohrle explains how to do that.

With this particular image, for example, you may want to draw attention to plants in the foreground by brightening them up. Conversely, by darkening trees at the far end of the lake you’ll increase contrast between that portion of the scene and the mountains in the background.

Mohrle walks you through the step-by-step masking techniques used to accomplish these goals. After opening the Masking panel he uses a Color Range mask to darken blues in the sky without affecting the clouds or adjacent mountains. A Linear Gradient is then employed to refine the selection so blue tones in the lake are unaffected.

You’ll then see the straightforward way Mohrle applies masks to other portions of the image to further balance the exposure. After that, some thoughtful color grading and subtle sharpening is all it takes to complete the impressive transformation. There’s much more to learn about editing landscape photos on Mohrle’s popular YouTube channel. So be sure to pay a visit and explore.

And don’t miss the tutorial we posted last week explaining why another experienced pro says, “Contrast is the most underrated tool” in landscape photography.