If so then the BBC Wildlife magazine may have the solution for you. They’ve put over 20 of their masterclass articles on their web site in PDF format to download. These cover a huge range of topics and subjects around the art of wildlife and nature photography.

Whether you want to improve your wild landscape shots, get the best out of your plant and flower photography or learn how best to capture bird behaviour there’s something for everyone.

The full list of articles includes:

• Wild Places
• Mammal Portraits
• Plant Portraits
• From Dusk to Dawn
• Underwater Photography
• Invertebrate Portraits
• Birds in Flight
• Animals in their Environment
• Bird Portraits
• Reptiles and Amphibians
• Creative Visions of Nature
• Wet Weather Wildlife
• Cold Weather Wildlife
• Black and White Photography
• Urban and Garden Wildlife
• Zoo Photography
• Bird Behaviour
• Mammal Behaviour
• Extreme Close-Up
• Innovative Wildlife Photography
• The World in our Hands

Visit the site for more tips and to download any of the above masterclasses.

BBC Wildlife Magazine: Photo Masterclasses

Digital Photography School recently posted an article which included 5 tips for successful panning and provides some nice images as examples.

However if you want to take things a little further, have a look at the article on Harry Nowell Photography site on mastering advanced motion techniques. In the article they go beyond panning with your subject and talk about fixing your camera onto the moving object, such as a bike or car. Not for the faint of heart, or those with expensive equipment!

The Art of Panning (Digital Photography School)
Mastering Advanced Motion Techniques (Harry Nowell Photography)

The carousel shot I posted a few entries ago has truly been one of my most popular shots for quite a while. Personally this surprised me as I’ve seen loads of examples of very similar shots, but hey, if people like it I’m happy.

However this got me thinking. This time of year when it gets dark early makes it an easy time to capture motion as car (and carousel) light pass you and your camera. Generally when you take a photo it is, by its very nature, a freeze frame of a moment in time. But this doesn’t mean you can’t convey motion within the shot.

Generally there are two options to choose from. Keep your subject sharp and blur the background (panning as you shoot a moving object perhaps), or vice versa with the subject blurred an the background sharp (think car light trails for this one). As it happens Digital Photography School has recently posted a tutorial on motion blur with great examples for both of these options (the link is below).

And in case you’re having trouble thinking of a concept to shoot, I’ve also provided a link to a site that showcases a selection of great motion blur shots.

DPS: A Beginners Guide to Capturing Motion in Your Photography
Smashing Magazine: Beauty of Motion Blur

Various Flickr groups I’m in have also been discussing this too, and as the nights are getting dark nice and early, and cold winter nights usually mean less clouds, it seems a great idea to try.

So here’s some links to some helpful resources:

DPS: 4 Steps To Creating Star Trails Photos Using Stacking Software

Photographing Star Trails (Great set of tutorials and photos)

Light pollution maps for the UK (Collection of downloadable PDFs)

The writer on this blog, Rishi, is a very funny guy and the amusing posts seem to be focused (excuse the pun) on taking a particular picture. What is refreshing is that Rishi then takes you through how the shot was composed including birds-eye views of the set up and position of subject, camera, lighting, etc. Being able to see the final picture and how this was set up is great for those wanting to learn more about how to get the best from your photography.

rOllon.in

My workflow is as follows:

1. Import the images from the shoot to a folder on your local hard disk. I also convert the RAW images to Adobes Digital Negative (DNG) format. This is an open source RAW format which give you a few more options than the camera’s default RAW format. I import into a new folder for each shoot to keep things separate. Finally, during import, I also add any common metadata for all the shots I’m importing.
2. Next I make sure my Quick Collection (in the Library) is empty.
3. Now the fun begins. I switch to the Library and select the folder I have just imported. Rather than stay in Grid view I switch to Loupe view so I can see each photo clearly, then I just step through each of the shots I’ve taken. If I like a shot and consider it one of the better ones from the shoot I press the B key. This adds the photo to your Quick Collection. Step through all your photos like this adding them to the Quick Collection if necessary.
4. Switching to the Quick Collection brings up all the best photos I’ve just selected. Now these may still need some (or a lot of) work in the Develop module but you now have them all together.
5. Moving into the Develop module I again step through each shot in the Quick Collection to work on the settings. I generally tend to work through the Develop options from top to bottom – Basic, Tones, HSL, etc. Sometimes, even though I’ve added a photo to the Quick Collection, when I come to work on it in the Develop module I might find that its not that good after all. If this is the case then just press the B key again to remove the shot from the Collection.
6. Once you’ve cropped and adjusted all the settings from the photos you selected, return to the Library and once again view the Quick Collection and switch to Grid view.
7. Next select all the photos (Ctrl/Cmd-A). Next to the Collections panel on the left you’ll see a + symbol. Click this to create a new permanent Collection, give the collection a name, and make sure the option to include selected photos is checked.
8. Finally, select your new collection to see the best of the shots from your recent shoot. From here you can export, create a slideshow or make a web gallery.

Once you get used to this way of doing things it becomes very quick to process your photos after a shoot. Of course there are many other steps you can include, such as pulling into Photoshop and making more radical amends,etc so this method is only really suitable for tweaks and changes you can do within Lightroom.

Travelling a lot this is something that often plagues me and I often end up waiting for quite a long time for that perfect shot with either no tourists in the frame or only those I know I can clone out. However the first option listed on this tutorial is one I’ve heard of before. Basically, take multiple exposures of the same scene and as people move about you’ll end up with a series of shots that when combined allow you to pick just the tourist free parts of the photo for a final single clean shot.

To see this method in more detail and the two others they recommend, visit the Photojojo website.