Photo Editing Tutorial

Follow writer and self-taught photographer Ella Hayes as she explores various basic photo shooting and editing techniques.

Shooting and Editing Nature and Wildlife Photos as a Self-Taught Photographer

By Ella Hayes

Though photography in itself is a fantastic hobby, one to grow within and improve throughout a lifetime, taking digital photos is only half of the process in becoming a great photographer. Taking said photos, and adjusting light and colors to shift the overall mood and feeling of a single piece, can make a boring and mundane image and turn it into something beautiful.

One common misconception about the hobby is that photography is excessively expensive and complicated, where you have to have the best of equipment and cameras to make good images. This is simply untrue; many people can become great photographers with only the camera on their phones and a free app installed from the app store. In fact, there are many free and accessible tools that can be used to make your images “pop”.

In this article, I will discuss various methods, apps, and techniques that you can use to better your photography and editing techniques without any expensive equipment or programs.

Disclaimer: I am a self-taught photographer, and am in no way a professional photographer. I like to do photography as a fun hobby, and I am simply using this article to inform Scroll readers about what I have observed over the years of taking and editing photos. For further information on official techniques, camera operations, and other photography-related topics, there are many online and local resources you can refer to. Thank you, and enjoy!

Taking the photo

Planning

Let’s start with the shooting of the original photo.

When dealing with creative landscape photography, in my opinion, it is less important to have an image in mind prior to going out and shooting photos. When doing other types of photography, such as portraits, most photographers will usually have a general idea of what they want their end products to look like. However, my personal experience is that it is much easier and successful to let the opportunity for a great photo come to you, instead of searching for a shot you’ve already planned in your head. Nonetheless, that’s the beauty of this hobby; you don’t have to follow this line of thinking! You actually may find it easier to have a plan of action because going out to look for great photo opportunities. It all depends on the preferences of the photographer.

This being said, whether or not you know what image you want to take beforehand, you will probably have a location that you are planning on photographing when taking landscape photos. For example, a trip to the beach or a walk in the woods are prime landscape photo-taking opportunities. As opposed to portrait photographers, where natural light and variables such as weather is a large consideration of when and where to take a photo, landscape photographers often must make do with what it provided, especially if they don’t plan to be in a certain place for an extended amount of time. (Though, it is also essential to remember that, in general, taking photos at dawn or dusk will provide a much softer and colorful light, as opposed to the harsh and bright lighting that midday brings.) Additionally, lighting can often be adjusted (to an extent) with editing apps after taking a photo.

Positioning & Focus

Whether using a regular camera or a phone camera, positioning of the subject and background is crucial in the making of a great photo. When considering typical portrait photography, the subject (the person or animal being photographed) and the background (the colors or background objects often featured behind the subjects) are obvious and easy to recognize. Additionally, the background of portrait photographers is usually blurred beyond recognition to bring more focus to the subject of the photo. However, for landscape photographers, sometimes the subject and background are almost equally significant.

The “subject” of every photograph will vary with every shot. With distant photos of a general landscape may have a somewhat prominent subject, the “background” is usually just as important. Consider this image of the Oregon coast. Most would interpret the subject of this image to be the cliff overlooking the sea; however, this does not diminish the importance of the rest of the image. With the “background” being the ocean, the background completes the image fully and helps the audience to fully interpret the entire image for itself.

On the other hand, some macro and wildlife images have a very distinct and distinguishable subject and background, where the focus is heavily dependent on the subject with little importance to the background. Especially in macro photography, the photo will often be focused on a single miniscule subject with the background as a blur. This is for stylistic choices, and for functions of the camera. On many cameras, and even some phones, the focus can be adjusted to closer and smaller objects for optimized macro photos.

Here is a great example of this macro focus concept. Due to the focus of the camera, it is clear that the subject of this shot is the mushroom and moss in the foreground. The background, a creek, is left out of focus for a more dramatic effect. Because of the intentional focus, the message that this image conveys is to look into the smaller details (the foliage of a creek) instead of simply viewing the big picture of the creek that many people would. This image illustrates the intricate details that can be found by looking closer into a landscape.

Similarly, many wildlife photos will have this specific focus as well, regardless of whether it is a macro photo or not. Looking at this wildlife photo, the background is out of focus, similar to the macro photo. This is because, in this wildlife photo, the subject of the hawk is decidedly more important than the plain background of water. If the background weren’t out of focus, this would likely make the image too busy; it would draw attention away from the subject, which is not the intended outcome.

As this proves, the focus of an image can be very influential on the mood and message of a photo.

Now, let’s talk about the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is a “rule” that many photographers follow, where whenever a photographer is positioning a photo, they will align the subject to a three by three grid. According to Darren Rowse for the Digital Photography School, “With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image. Not only this – but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo.”

What Rowse is referring to when he says “four important parts” is where the lines of the grid intersect is where the subject of a photo should likely go. Or, the subject can go along the lines of the grid.

Let’s experience this “rule” in action. In this image, the subject is the mallard, and the background is the river. According to the rule, the subject (the duck) should be placed somewhat along one of the lines of the grid, or on one of the intersections of the lines. Here, this photo follows this rule pretty closely; the subject is placed along the far right vertical subject line and is contained to the top two thirds of the image, with the reflection within the bottom third of the image. Mainly, the goal of this rule is to keep the subject out of the dead middle of the image, which can lead to a basic and less creative shot.

Here is another example of the thirds rule captured in a landscape. A shot taken down a straight road (or line, for that matter) is a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of this rule. However, not only does the subject of this image (partially, the road) follow down the far left subject line, the top of the mountain (the main subject) is caught directly on the top left intersection of lines. This is perfect for this concept; ideally the subject of the image will be on the crossing of one of lines, and there are four total intersections. Though the image would also work with the mountain centered within the image, that would probably work better if it had been a vertical image instead of a horizontal one. That way, it could be two-thirds of the way up vertically.

Though the rule is a basic principle for many photographers, that doesn’t mean that rule can be broken. Mostly, it depends on the photographer and their audiences’ preferences, and the circumstances of the photo. Here, you can see an an example of a photo not following the rule of thirds. As you can see, the subject of the image, the deer, is not in any way related to the subject lines. In fact, the deer is almost directly centered in this image. Some people prefer this look as opposed to the rule of thirds perspective. It really all depends on personal preference and the conditions of the image taken.

Editing

Now that you have taken photos, you’ve still got to enhance those images to convey the mood and messages that you want to bring across. How you do that is editing within a digital program.

My personal favorite photo-editing resource, one I know to be highly popular by many professional photographers, is Adobe. Adobe has many fantastic apps that can be installed on a phone or computer totally free. My main app that I use for photo editing from my laptop and phone is Lightroom, and secondly, Photoshop Express. Both apps have many options for adjusting light and color, and also have many presets to help you get creative with your images. For this article, though, I will be referring to Lightroom features solely.

Now, let’s go through some basic editing features, and how they affect photos.

Cropping

Cropping is a simple edit that many people with no photoshop experience with photography have already done through their phones. Cropping means adjusting an image to either cut out a certain aspect of the photo, or to change the aspect of the image from one ratio to another.

I crop nearly every photo I take, for one very specific reason. I like all of my photos to stay in a certain ratio to keep it consistent, but ratios change depending on the camera I use. So, I use the cropping feature to convert all the photos I take to this ratio, which is 16:9, first and foremost. Once again, this is just a personal preference. You can also crop your photos to any ratio you desire, though a common one automatic to many smartphones is 4:3.

Exposure

Exposure determines the light let into the camera when taking a photo, or essentially, the brightness of the end product. Now, I won’t go too far into detail about how to adjust this before even taking the photo with the camera, as every phone and camera is different, but this setting can be adjusted in photoshop very easily. Taking the exposure up will make a photo brighter, and will basically make the photo whiter. If it is scrubbed all the way up, the image may even be almost completely white. Bringing it down will do the opposite; it will make the image darker. No need to say, the extremes of the exposure probably won’t be useful in editing. However, making the exposure slightly higher or lower can help fix camera mistakes and adjust the mood of the photo. Typically, I find that phones’ automatic settings will often overexpose the image, and I usually end up decreasing the exposure slightly in Lightroom.

Contrast

Contrast is the adjustment of the comparisons of whites and blacks in an image. Let me explain further: Increasing the contrast of an image will dramatize all the contrasting colors with bright highlights and dark shadows, where decreasing contrast will result in flatter and dull colors, without much distinction between each color. Think of a picture taken through thick fog. This is a great example of low contrast; it’s harder to distinguish between colors and objects through this fuzzy image. For this reason, often contrast will be raised when editing photos. Contrast can help an image be bolder, instead of being disproportionately greyer than what we can perceive with our human eyes.

Highlights and Shadows versus Whites and Blacks

There are four settings on the basic Lightroom mobile app that help photographers adjust the bright point and dark points of an image to their liking, and they can often get confused between one another. Highlights will take the brightest parts of a photo (in my experience, is often the sky), and will either help to bring out the details in those bright parts by bringing the bar to the left, or to further brighten the highlights. This directly targets the lightest parts of the image, instead of the entire photo itself. Whites, on the other hand, identifies the true whites of an image and helps you to set that white point. Highlights are more detail oriented, while whites are more focused on finding the real white point of an image. Shadows and blacks are the exact opposite. Shadows will identify the darkest part of an image, and either help to bring out those details in lightening those shadows, or make them further darker. The blacks setting will identify the true black of an image and either make it brighter or darker.

Temperature & Tint

Temperature and tint are great tools to use in making a mood, or “vibe” of an image. Temperature can go up and down: Bringing the temperature down will make the image bluer, or essentially, “colder.” Bringing the temperature up will make the photo yellower, or “warmer.” This is a great mood setter for creating an image. I tend to find that decreasing the temperature makes for a darker and dramatic image, while increasing the temperature will make a photo brighter and “happier,” and is a great tool for desert-type images. Of course, this is all dependent on the eye of the photographer! Tint does a similar thing as temperature, but with different colors. You can add this tint of green or purple. It’s always great to experiment with combining temperature settings and tint colors, and what they can do to help you reach your ideal mood. Lightroom also allows you to adjust the tone, saturation, and luminance of eight different colors that can be found in photos.

Vibrance and Saturation

Vibrance and saturation are both adjustments of all the colors in a single image. However, it’s still important to know the difference between these two color settings. Saturation increases overall vibrancy of colors in an image, and makes all colors seen bolder and brighter. Vibrancy is similar to saturation, though it mainly works to further saturate more muted colors to make the image still even. Using vibrancy can help avoid maxing out certain colors in an image. Just because these settings work to do similar things, it doesn’t mean that they have to be adjusted in tandem. This meaning saturation can be turned down while vibrancy is turned up, and vice versa. Always experiment to find what looks best with every individual photo.

Presets

Presets in an editing app can often be mistaken for filters, though they are still distinct. Presets are very useful in attaining a certain look or vibe to a certain image, and they can help get the ball rolling in your editing process. Presets are pre-determined settings that make a photo look a certain way. There are many different types of presets, but some examples are “warm contrast,” “red lift matte,” and “cool shadows and warm highlights.” Most presets are self-explanatory, and experimenting with these different presets can help photographers determine what mood they want their photos to have. Unlike filters, presets can be manually customized to each image, and can be personalized based on the photographer’s preferences.

Conclusion

All these techniques and editing features that I went over today are the very basic version of mobile editing that anybody can access. I hope this has helped you learn how to better your images, and if you are interested in this subject I highly recommend that you look into photography classes with GPHS, or even online tutorials and classes that can help you further your knowledge about photography and editing.

If you want to see some examples of before and after editing photos, along with the Lightroom settings, they are attached down below!

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