The Night I Hiked Three Miles in the Dark to Find Joshua Tree's Hidden Treasure
Some of the best photography locations don't have a trailhead. Samuelson's Rocks—seven massive boulders bearing eight philosophical inscriptions deep in Joshua Tree National Park—is one of them. No trail, no signs, just open desert, a Milky Way overhead, and one of the most unusual night photography subjects in the American Southwest. Here's how I made the hike and created the shot, complete with a Perseid meteor for good measure.
Every Composition Rule Ranked, Plus the One to Skip Entirely
Every photographer learns the rule of thirds early, then spends years collecting other guidelines that promise a more balanced frame. The question worth sitting with is which one actually deserves top billing, and whether the real answer is a technique at all.
Nine Landscape Photography Myths You've Probably Repeated
Landscape photography carries a stack of advice so old and so repeated that most of it goes unquestioned, and a good portion of it falls apart the moment you test it in the field. Sorting the useful guidance from the myths changes how you spend your time, your money, and your mornings.
Mac mini M5 Pro Review: A Fast, Silent Desktop for Photo and Video Work
The Mac mini with M5 Pro chews through 4K footage and reads from its SSD in an instant, from a silver box 5 inches square that never once became audible on my desk. It is the fastest small desktop Apple has built, and for photo and video work, it is the best value in the entire Mac lineup.
Apple sent me the following configuration: an 18-core CPU with a 20-core GPU, 48 GB of unified memory, and a 1 TB SSD. I spent a week running the work photographers and filmmakers actually do on it, including raw batches, 4K transcodes, a Resolve project, and hours of pinned all-core load.
Moody Coastal Beach Hut Shot Wins Photo Of The Week Accolade
A moody coastal scene with a row of beach huts standing in calm water, titled 'Just before the heavens opened' by PhilNewberry, has been chosen as our Photo of the Week.
There's plenty to love about this image, but the mirror-like reflections in the calm water, the varied soft tones of the huts, and that moody, overcast sky are what really stood out. The huts stretching back give the picture great depth, and the overcast weather adds a calm, peaceful mood to the scene.
It's a calm, minimalist coastal landscape that's definitely worthy of our Photo of the Week accolade.
Every Photo of the Week (POTW) winner will be rewarded with a Samsung 128GB PRO Plus microSDXC memory card with SD adapter, providing top-tier storage for all your creative needs across multiple devices. But that's not all! In January 2027, we'll crown our 2026 Photo of the Year winner, who will take home the ultimate prize of a Samsung Portable 1TB SSD T7 Shield, courtesy of Samsung. See the terms & conditions and prize procedure for more information.
It’s time to shoot, submit, and showcase your best work for a chance to win these incredible rewards! Want to be our next POTW winner? Just upload an image to our gallery where you'll also find all of our past POTW winners.
Chasing Fog in Galicia: How to Work a Single Tree
Fog changes a landscape into something you can actually shoot, but the fog alone won't hand you a photo. You still have to find a subject worth pointing the camera at, and then you have to work it.
Does Documenting an Event Still Need Photography?
A phone video shows more of an event than any photograph. But a photograph is what stays with us, and that says something about what photography has always been for.
Documenting reality today increasingly happens without photographs: video has become a more suitable medium for showing what is happening. The question is not new, but it is worth asking again now, when there is too much of everything to look at and a growing share of it was generated rather than recorded. Shouldn't the documentary function of photography now be discussed in direct comparison with video?
How to Expose Birds When the Light Won't Cooperate
Underexposing to save your highlights sounds like the safe move, but it drags your entire image down with it. Darker files, harder tracking, more editing, and photos you don't enjoy looking at all come from overcorrecting a problem that has a much better fix.
Top Quick Tips On Photographing Ducks
Feeding ducks is something everyone enjoys but next time you head off for your Sunday morning stroll around your local pond, pocket your camera as well as the treats you take for the Mallards and Swans.
1. An opportunity to get close to wildlife
As ducks are used to people visiting with goodies they're not usually skittish so getting close to them shouldn't be a problem. Even still, taking along a small bag of birdseed to scatter will keep the ducks in front of you for longer increasing the chances you have of getting a good shot.
Flat banks are the perfect location for photographing ducks as the low angle gives you a shot that has more of a duck's eye view. If you don't want to work hand-held, take along a light-weight tripod or beanbag to sit your camera on.
Winter's a great time to head to the water's edge as the sun sits at a lower angle for longer which means you don't have to get up at the crack of dawn for softer light. You'll also get mist rolling over the water – perfect for silhouetting a bird against. For a bit of variety try shooting their reflections or look for interesting behaviour such as fighting or preening activities.
3. Need more details?
If you find their feathers are lacking in detail try adding a little fill-in flash. Just remember for birds such as Swans that have lighter feathers you'll need slightly stronger light. This time of year when lakes can be slightly frozen light will be reflected off the icy surface back under the duck, highlighting detail in their plume. For particularly gloomy days switch to a slightly higher ISO so you can use a quicker shutter speed. If you're out when the sky is rather bright keep an eye on your exposure if Swans are around as a white bird against a bright sky may mean your camera underexposes the shot.
For shots of birds in flight make sure you're on continuous focus and get the focus locked on the bird straight away. To freeze their movement in the air or when they're splashing on the water try a shutter speed of around 1/500sec but if you want to be a little more creative try to blur the motion of the wings with a slower speed of around 1/30sec.
You Can Find Emperor Penguin Colonies From Space by Their Poop
The satellites that first mapped emperor penguins could not see a single one of them. Landsat records the surface at 30 meters per pixel, and a four-foot bird disappears long before that. What those satellites could see was the mess. Emperor penguins spend the winter packed shoulder to shoulder on the sea ice, and they leave behind a reddish-brown smear of guano so large it registers from orbit as a stain on an otherwise blank white continent. Roughly half of the emperor penguin colonies we know about were found not by spotting the birds, but by spotting their poop.
Insta360 Mic Pro Review: A Serious Wireless Mic For Creators
When it comes to wireless microphones, there are already some very strong options available, so when a new system comes along, it needs to offer something more than simply being another wireless microphone. The Insta360 Mic Pro is entering a market where DJI and Rode are already well established, so the question for me isn't really whether it works, because most modern wireless microphone systems work pretty well. The more important question is whether the Mic Pro actually gives you something that makes it worth choosing over the competition.
How to Build High Contrast Without Blowing Out Your Sky
High contrast can wreck an image fast, crushing shadows into black and burning highlights into paper white. The trick is holding onto detail at both ends while still keeping the punch that makes a sunset landscape feel dramatic.
A 4-Minute Exposure and the Light That Made It Worth It
The hardest part of landscape photography is leaving the house at all, especially when the light looks unpromising and the tide is coming in. Talking yourself into an evening shoot is where a lot of good pictures live or die.
The Two Questions Every Client Is Really Asking About Your Work
Clients ask about your style constantly, and most of the time they're actually asking two separate questions without realizing it. Answering both well is the difference between a booking and a polite pass.
Skip the Sky: Shooting Details When the Vista Fails
When the sky gives you nothing, the smart move is to stop shooting it. That single decision turned an overcast, drizzly afternoon at the beach into a productive session built entirely around red rocks, rock pools, and golden sand.
How To Photograph Animals In UK Wildlife Parks
With half-term coming up in October, you may be looking for something that'll keep the kids entertained but still give you the opportunity to take a photo or two. One location that's worth considering is a safari park as there are some excellent ones based in the UK that'll give you the opportunity to capture frame-filling images of Lions and other animals usually seen on an African plane.
1. Photographing wildlife from your car or a bus
As you're going to be stuck in your car, or the safari park's transport service, a long lens is a must. Something like a 70-300mm telephoto will do nicely but if you have a longer one take that along too as smaller subjects such as birds will look tiny otherwise. The inside of a car isn't the place for a tripod but having something to support your camera when you're working with long lenses is a good idea. You can get window-mounted tripods but a beanbag is a cheaper and easier way to go. Simply place it on a surface, rest your camera on it and click away. As you're shooting through glass pack a lens hood and/or a polarizer filter as they'll both help minimise reflections.
2. Use queueing to your advantage
People moan about having to queue but if you're a photographer at a safari park this could work to your advantage as it means you'll have time to observe your surroundings. If you can wait in one position for a while to snap interesting behaviour. If you're visiting the park to see one particular animal make sure you've done your research so you know what time of day they'll be out and most active. Keep an eye on the weather too as this can make some animals retreat to cover and you'll be left with empty shots of fields. However, if you do get to the park when it's raining don't get too down-hearted as some animals don't mind the rain and raindrops on the fur and the reflection of light on wet surfaces can create very moody photos.
3. Small changes make a big difference
As you're in a small space it can be tricky to move and find different angles to shoot from but there are plenty of other things you can do to improve your shots. Always make sure the eye is in focus and when it is don't click the shutter straight away – wait for the glint in the eyes that can make both human and animal portraits come to life. Sometimes you'll have to wait for the animal to move to get this but all you have to do is keep re-adjusting your framing until the moment arrives. If it's portraits you're particularly after make sure you zoom in to make them frame-filling and if you have cars or other distracting items in the background wait until you've changed position to take the shot or blur it out of sight with a large aperture. If it's a group of lions or a herd of elephants you're photographing use a smaller aperture such as f/22 to limit the blur to get the whole group in the shot.
When you're in a hurry it's easy to forget about composition so you'll put your subject slap bang in the centre of the image. For some shots this will create a strong portrait but try to resist doing it every time and really think about the rule of thirds when framing up. You also need space for your animal to walk into and don't amputate an animals extremities – a lion missing the tip of its tail won't look right.
As you have to keep your windows up you'll be shooting through glass so to minimise reflections make sure you have your lens against the window. If you have one, try using a lens hood or you could put your spare hand above or to the side of the lens to help minimise reflection. As the engine will be running you'll find the glass will be vibrating so speed up the shutter speed to minimise shake. You may also find manual focus handy as glass can sometimes fool a camera.
One more, very important point is to observe the rules. We don't want to hear any stories of ePz members who were turned into lunch!
I Tested Every Aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro
Since Apple's keynote I have made two videos about the iPhone 18 Pro's new variable aperture lens, and in both of them I made predictions about how it would actually perform. Both phones are now sitting on my desk. I shot the same scenes on the 17 Pro and the 18 Pro, indoors and outdoors, at every aperture the new lens offers, then pulled all of it into Lightroom and zoomed to 400 percent. Some of what I predicted held up. A fair amount of it did not.
The Famous World War I Armistice Recording Is Actually a Photograph Made on 35mm Stock
At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, an American crew near the Moselle River was pulling a strip of light-sensitive material past a beam of light while a tuning fork laid a hundred timing marks a second along its edge. What came off that machine is a photograph of a front going quiet, and the birdsong you hear over it on social media could never have reached it.
Is the Panasonic LUMIX L10 the Perfect Travel Companion?
A couple of months back, Panasonic kindly allowed me to take the new Panasonic LUMIX L10 to the Italian Dolomites, with the rather simple brief of finding out what it was like as a travel companion. I wasn’t traveling with the L10 alone. Alongside it was my Nikon Z 8.
Why Your Sunset Photos Look Empty and How to Fix Them
Empty sunsets, gray black-and-white frames, and lavender fields that turn red under the wrong white balance all trace back to a short list of repeatable errors. Fix those, and the same locations you already shoot start producing frames worth printing.