Nature Photography: Fundamentals, Concepts, and Techniques

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Jeremy Janice and I live in beautiful Colorado. I want to teach you the fundamentals, concepts, and techniques that I use to shoot nature photography. I didn't pick up a camera until 2016 when I turned 30 years old. During my later adolescence I battled with depression and anxiety, and nature was my therapy. I developed a deep love and appreciation for the outdoors and it brought me to nature photography. I started sharing the pictures of my adventures and the struggles that I overcame in life, which all became cathartic for my soul. I started to realize I wanted to become the light in the darkness and an inspiration for others to follow through my nature photography. I am going to teach you the techniques that I use to shoot sunrises, sunsets, lakes, forests, waterfalls, and macro photography. This class is geared toward beginning in amateur photographers that want to take their game to the next level. By the end of this class, you'll be able to take a properly focused, properly exposed, and technically sound photo that you'll share with myself and the class in the class forum. I am honored to be your teacher and I'm excited to welcome you to the wonderful world of nature photography. 2. Class Project: Welcome to the class project. For the class project, you will take a photo that is properly exposed, properly focused, and technically sound, which you'll share with myself in the class forum. We're going to focus on a properly exposed photo first. In this photo you can see the highlights are still intact, so the details are in and around the clouds, and the lights and shadows. Down below, you can also see where the sun is not blown out and that details are in and around the sun as well. In this photo, this is a properly focused photo, so the depth of field is there. Down in the bottom, you can see the rocks and up above you can see the mountain, and forest in clear view. This is a technically sound photos. In addition to having the proper exposure and the proper focus end of the field, there's also no color banding, know dust spots, no noise or artifacts, and the proper framing. These are all things to keep in mind when you're constructing your class project for review. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Equipment: Let's talk about equipment. This class is geared toward digital cameras. Let's look at the digital single-lens reflex first or DSLR. Now what happens is, before you press the shutter release, the light is going through the camera, goes through the aperture, hits the mirror, bounces off the pent-up prism, and then comes out the viewfinder. That's also why you don't want to stare at the light because the sun can actually make you go blind. It's an intensified view. If you do need to look at the sun, just look at the LCD screen in front of you. Post shutter; What happens is, the mirror and the shutter go up, the light comes through the aperture in the lens and it's going to expose onto the sensor. Mirror lens cameras work in very much the same way. They have an electronic shutter though. When you press that button, the electronic shutter goes up and it's going to expose onto that sensor. Now let's talk about lenses. You have two main options when you're looking at shooting. You have a zoom lens and a prime lens. First, we'll talk about the zoom lens. The zoom lens has a variable focal length. I personally use a 24-70 millimeter lens and that allows you to take macro shots all the way going back to having a wide area landscape as well. The zoom lens will capture shots that the prime cannot. This can get very expensive though. Keep that in mind when you're looking at zoom lenses. The ability to capture a wide range of images without actually changing lenses is probably the most appealing thing to me. [inaudible] spots become very big headache down the road and in post-processing, as you'll see later, they can totally ruin your image. Now let's talk about prime lenses. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length. For example, this one in the picture is a 35-millimeter lens. They have better low-light capacity and they are much less expensive than zoom lenses. You cannot zoom in. You have to get very creative in shooting. Now let's talk about tripods. Tripods are great way to keep the maximum quality of an image without actually having to hold your camera. You want to use one that has lighten and durable. If you use a crappy tripod, they are absolutely miserable to work with and they'll give you more headaches than they're worth there's a saying that tripods are closers and I completely agree with it. It changes the entire quality of your image. Whether that's sunsets, lakes, waterfalls no matter the situation, you can typically take a better picture with a tripod and you can enhance the only thing to keep in mind as you want to turn the vibration reduction off when you're using a tripod. Otherwise, it can't create shake on itself. Now let's talk about filters. The first filter we're going to touch base on is the UV filter. The UV filter goes over the front of your lens and it can protect it against dust and scratches. If you buy a cheap filter, it can degrade your photo quality so you have to keep that in mind. Can also cause solar flare and some artifacts. The next filter we're going to talk about is the neutral density filter. This is one of my favorite pieces of equipment that I own. I use this for almost every single sunset and waterfall that I shoot and I can emphasize its importance enough. Now what a neutral density filter does is it lowers the amount of light bled into the lens. Think about it as sunglasses for your lens. It's perfect for long exposures and it adds dramatic effects to the scenes as you'll see. Next, let's talk about a shutter release. A shutter release is going to allow you to use the bolt and time settings on your camera. Its instrumental in shooting fireworks, lightning, night photography that prevents the camera from shaking when you're taking longer exposures as well. Lastly, let's talk about photo editing software. You can use a number of different editing software but I prefer to use Adobe Lightroom. I prefer to use it for the ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and the times that it has to Adobe Creative sweep. Again, you can use whatever software you would like. You are just going to need the ability to take your photo from a raw image to a JPEG later on down the road. Up next we're going to talk about the Fundamentals of Photography being ISO, aperture and shutter speed. I will see you there. 4. Fundamentals: ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed: Let's talk about the Fundamentals of Photography being ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. The goal when you're out there shooting is to take the highest quality image given your current situation and conditions. Whether that's on a lake with a tripod, up in the mountains without a tripod, or just on the side of the road trying to shoot something. You want to take the best quality image with your current situation. Think of ISO, aperture and shutter speed and a triangle. You're trying to get the best qualities of each one. The balance of these aspects is what's going to lead to a properly exposed high-quality photo. Let's look at ISO first. ISO is on a scale from 100 to 51,200. This is very simplified because every camera is going to be different. Think of your best quality as being an ISO 100 and your least quality as being in 51,200. As you increase your ISO, your noise is going to increase as well. Your light will increase and your color will brighten as the ISO increases,. Just think of it as a degradation in quality. As you go into a higher ISO. Your goal is to keep the ISO as low as possible in order to maintain the quality of the image as it relates to shutter speed and aperture. Based on those conditions, your ISO may increase. When you're first starting out and photography, a lot of photographers will tell you do not go over 100 ISO. I completely disagree. That severely limits your ability to take high-quality images if you're only staying at 100 ISO. Don't be afraid to go up that scale, just keep in mind that as your ISO increases, your quality is going to degrade along with that as well. ISO controls the image quality and the noise allowed in the photo. Next we're going to talk about aperture. Aperture is going to start on the small end of the scale being f/2.8, which means that the aperture is very wide open.That's going to allow a lot of light in. As you go down the scale you'll end F/22, which is a very large aperture, but it's a pinhole size, so it's not letting as much light into that lens. As you increase your aperture, your depth of field is going to increase, which means the amount that you can actually see in the image becomes more clear, the light is going to decrease as the aperture increases as well, so you need to make adjustments to make up for that.The color is also darkening as the aperture increases. Think of a low aperture like f/2.8 as being better for close ups with a blurry background. F/22 would be better for landscapes and in-focus background. You use a higher aperture for landscapes, lower aperture for close-ups and macro shots. Your aperture is going to control your focus and your depth of field. Finally, we'll address shutter speed. Shutter speed will go on a scale from 1/8000th of a second up to thirty-seconds. Your motion is going to slow as you shutter speed increases, your color is going to darken as your shutter speed increases, and your light is going to increase as your shutter speed increases. Think of a shutter speed of 1/8,000th of a second as freezing motion and shutter speed of thirty-seconds as slowing motion. You're going to want to use slower shutter speeds for long exposures and slowing down the motions of a frame, such as in waterfalls. In order to freeze the motion, you want to shoot no slower than 1/500th of a second. To slow down a waterfall, shoot no faster than a half of a second. Put your camera on a tripod on anything lower than 1/125th of a second in your hand or the camera, shake will be visible. Think of shutter speed that's controlling the amount of light exposed and the movement of the frame. Now let's bring this all together. Your ISO is going to control the amount of noise, the depth of color in the photo, and that amount of light in the photo as well. The lower the ISO, the better quality of photo that you're going to have. Your aperture is going to control your depth of field and your focus. A lower aperture is going to have more light let in, but it's also going to be a blurrier background. A higher aperture is going to let less light in, but it's going to be more in focus from front to back. Your shutter speed is going to control the speed of motion in the frame and it's also going to control the amount of light allowed in for the exposure. The balance of the ISO aperture and shutter speed are going to interplay to get the proper exposure for that particular photo that you're trying to take. Up next, we're going to talk about setting up the camera for success. 5. Setting Up Your Camera For Success: Let's talk about setting up your camera for success. First, we're going to talk about RAW vs JPEG photos. RAW photos are uncompressed, they're the highest quality image that you can have, and they're large file size. They allow you to edit an image in a photo processing software and they add better color and brightness in a photo. JPEG photos are compressed, they're of lower quality. They're smaller file sizes, but the editing is done for you, so they're ready to post on Instagram or Twitter or whatever you want to post them to. The photo editing software is not recommended because it will actually degrade the photo image quality quick, because it's not of the same quality that RAW image would be. When you're starting out, I highly recommend you shoot in JPEG just to get a feel for the camera and the settings. Once you're comfortable with your camera, you need to set your camera to shoot in RAW at the largest file size, so you can edit in a photo editing software. If you're not comfortable with RAW, at first, you can set your camera to RAW and JPEG photo capture, where it will capture both and allow you to keep both image sizes. Shooting in RAW is going to allow you to keep the greatest control of your photo from start to finish. Next, let's talk about shooting modes. Pre-Set modes that are on your camera are great when you're starting out. They allow you to get a feel for your camera and figure out what pictures you're good at taking, how your framings coming out and your composition. I highly recommend shooting in the Pre-Set modes, just so you get that feel for your camera, but then you're going to want to move on to something greater. Aperture mode is my preference of shooting 90 percent of the time. You're setting the aperture, which is your focus and depth of field, so lower aperture is going to give you a shorter depth of field, less focus, which means you're going to have a blurred background versus a higher aperture, giving you a greater depth of field and more focus, which means more focus from front to back. Typical landscapes, you just need to adjust the ISO to match your desired aperture and the shutter speed is going to adjust automatically based on those settings. Shutter priority is allowing you to set the shutter speed, which lets you control the amount of light that you let in and the movement in the scene. A faster shutter speed is going to let less light in and it's going to stop the movement. A slower shutter speed is going to allow more light in and the movement is going to be slowed in the picture. You would adjust the ISO to match your shutter speed and then the aperture will adjust automatically according to that. Manual mode is when you're setting shutter speed, ISO and aperture. This is the mode that I use for sunsets, night shooting, waterfalls, anything that I need the greatest amount of control, but it is much easier to make mistakes in this mode. Now let's talk about focus mode. Focus mode, there's a Pinpoint and single Auto Focus, which is my choice at sunsets. It's great when you're trying to focus on single highlights such as clouds and making sure the photos not going to blow out. It's also great when you're trying to focus on small subjects, such as in macro photography, but wide area auto focus is great for landscapes and large cloud formations. So you can focus on those highlights without blowing out the whole picture as well. Auto-area, auto focus typically focuses on too many subjects within the entire frame. It also can easily blow up clouds and it can throw off the focus of what you're aiming at. So my preference is to not use Auto-area Auto Focus, but you need to figure out what works best for you. Up next, we're going to talk about the concepts of photography being the rule of thirds, composition and framing. 6. Concepts: Rule of Thirds, Composition, and Framing: Let's talk about the concepts of photography being the Rule of Thirds, composition and framing. When you think about the Rule of Thirds, you can look at the image broken down horizontally and vertically into alerts. Compositionally, you're looking at putting a subject at one of those intersections or at one of those lines within the photo in order to create the proper composition. While the Rule of Thirds is great and giving you an idea of framing, I still think rules are made to be broken and you need to find your own vision within the photography world and what you want to put out into the world as well. Next we have composition. Composition is the way everything comes together in a frame. That's colors, shadows, lights, and the actual subject within that photo. What I always try to do is create balance. Whatever the images that I'm trying to portray, I want it to be balanced with all the other aspects of the photo. Leading lines draw your eye into something. They allow you to compose great images that really give you an extra dot the field within it. Now there's tons of leading lines in nature, so always be on the lookout for those. The next concept is in a book, but I call it finding your own vision. The best thing you can do is bring all your experiences, expertise, and personal style into your imagery. This image in front of you was one that I took after I hiked down and back out of the Grand Canyon, 17 miles up onto this ridge. This was the final sunset that I was blessed with. I love stories, I love being able to portray a story, and I love being able to evoke emotion through my imagery as well. This does all of that. The best thing I can recommend to you is finding your own vision, find your own process, and put out what you want to see in the world. The next thing we're going to talk about is experimenting. Now this is one subject in for different views, same morning, same hike, different angles. The best thing you can do is go try different angles, different focal lengths, different lighting, depending on how the sun is coming over the ridge, adding different dynamics and different types of field is really going to change the way that you see the world. The only thing that's ever going to hold you back in your imagery is what you think is possible for yourself. Up next, we're going to talk about sunrises and sunsets. 7. Sunrises and Sunsets: Let's talk about sunrises and sunsets. For sunrises and sunsets, the equipment you need is a tripod, a shutter release, and an ND filter. Now for sunrises, what you're concerned with is the sun becoming harsh very quickly. The sun comes over the horizon and it adds a lot of light into the lens very quick, so you got to be mindful of that. Now one of the ways to mitigate this is to put an object in between yourself and the lens in order to control the amount of light that you have coming in. It will add some unique characteristics like you see in this photo as well with all the lights and shadows and are playing here. The key takeaway for this is to keep making your shutter speed faster, open up your aperture and raise your ISO and the order to adjust for the light that's coming into the lens. Sunsets are the exact opposite problem. The sun is going down over the horizon and it's taking light away from the lens. Now the sun and the colors linger longer, so you have more time to be able to take the proper photo. ND filters are going to allow you to take long exposures and add the dramatic effect like you see in this scene. The lake and the clouds have a very soft silky fill in this photo and that's what those ND filters are going to do. Another thing that the ND filters are going to do is preserve and prevent the blow out of the highlights and the lights in the photo. Here you can see there's a very even distribution of highlights in the photo and those were preserved by adding an ND filters. Now the key takeaway with sunsets is the exact opposite of sunrises. You want to keep making your shutter speed slower, you want to close down your aperture, and you want to lower your ISO in order to adjust for the light or lack thereof in the photos. Now one of the great things you can do with the sunset or really any scene in general is to add different elements that are going to be specific to the place you're shooting. In this photo you can see where I added that ice down on the corner, and that's because this was a frozen lake in the dead of winter in Colorado and I wanted to show that. You can also find different ways in order to use some of the highlights in the photo. In this photo, you can see where the water is running next to the ice. It's really the only place that's showing the highlights of the clouds and I wanted to accentuate that. Look for different ways to bring in these different elements and really add depth and character to your photo as well. Up next, we're going to talk about lakes. 8. Lakes: Let's talk about lakes. The equipment needed for lakes is a tripod, shutter release, and an ND filter, just like you needed for sunrises and sunsets. One of the best things you can do at lakes is find the unique features of that lake. Lakes can be so different, and adding that unique feature can really differentiate your photo for the viewer. Now, lakes are amazing reflectors as well. Think of it like using a mirror. Try to find different angles and different vantage points to create a new perspective on the scene. In this frame I made sure that the Denver skyline was clearly visible when the lightening strike hit, and it reflected in the lake. Now, lakes are a great place to reflect symmetry as well. In this photo I wanted to create something unique, so I made sure that the house was visible on the frame. When you're in search of the perfect reflection, keep in mind that reflections are best found on small lakes, where there's a small volume of water, and there's less turbulence within the water. Especially if there's a lot of wind present it's going to make those reflections much harder to achieve. Now, one of the ways you can mitigate this as well is to use an ND filter. If you can extend the shutter speed, it's also going to allow you to slow down the speed of the water, and you can get some of those reflections within that frame as well. Now, lakes can also make a great complement to a scene, such as the view from Mount Roy in New Zealand. Now, when you are in search of those reflections, keep in mind that sunrises, sunsets, and clouds, are best for those. If the sun is shining brightly, usually the light will wash out any chance of reflections in the water. Keep that in mind when you're out there trying to shoot those. Up next, we're going to talk about forests. 9. Forests: Let's talk about forests. In a forest, the equipment you need is just a tripod and a shutter release because there is a lot less light in there. Now, forest can be extremely dense and it takes some critical thinking in order to frame the forest properly. The branches in the trees can create a lot of complexity with the light and shadows and you just want to be mindful of that. One of my favorite things to do in a forest is to look up, you get a lot of complexity looking up at the branches and the trees, and it gives you a great depth to fill. The forest floors can provide a lot of complexity as well. A lot of those lights and shadows are being cast down there. Then once you get down low, you can see some different vantage points you wouldn't otherwise. Trees are able to add an enormous depth and sense of scale. In this photo, the tree provides a great foreground element and shows you the size of one of those. All the way in the back you can see that density of a forest with that tree in mind, and it gives you a greater sense of scale there. Trees can also make great framing elements. You can see on each side of this photo, I actually used the trees as a natural frame in order to show the subject that I was trying to highlight, which is this giant canyon down in southern Colorado. Leaves and branches are also great illuminators of light. In this photo, you can see where I made sure I had enough sun coming through in order to eliminate those trees. It also gives you a greater sense of place as well. The edges of the forest typically have a beautiful transition between the forest and whatever is coming after that. This photo shows perfectly the interplay between lights and shadows in the early morning and then illumination that it has down on the beach below. Always be looking for unique landscapes on the edges of forests that you wouldn't find typically anywhere else. Up next, we're going to talk about waterfalls. 10. Waterfalls: Let's talk about waterfalls. The equipment needed for waterfalls is a tripod, a shutter release, and an ND filter. The beauty of waterfall is slowing them down in order to show the true characteristics of that waterfall. In order to create that silky look on a waterfall, what you want to do is slow down the shutter speed to at least a half of a second, and that'll create that dramatic effect. One of the other things that you can do is freeze the motion or the waterfall, which shows you the dramatic effects of the low energy of the waterfall and in order to do that, you want to make sure your shutter speed is above 1/500th of a second. When you're trying to create that dramatic silky effect of the waterfall, make sure you put an ND filter on. If you don't, the highlights can blow out very easily and it'll ruin the entire image. Waterfalls are typically surrounded by great landscapes. Try to use other objects in the photo to actually add a greater depth and scale to the photo. This is actually a waterfall that's about 40 feet high and it's very hard to tell otherwise, but you can see with the rock and the tree that it is a very large waterfall. One of my favorite aspects of waterfalls is that you can get a lot of rainbows. In order to create this effect that you want to make sure you move to where the sunlight is shining into the waterfall, creating that prism of colors that you see in rainbows. The thing I like about this photo is that you're getting a lot of those lights and shadows coming from the rays of the sun through the waterfall. You can see that it's very translucent on the other end of it as well and it adds a deep character to this photo. Make sure you use lights and shadows in order to create these unique effects that you can get in the scene. Up next, we' re going talk about macro photography. 11. Macro Photography: Let's talk about macro photography. Macro photography is great in that you can zoom in close to see a world that you normally wouldn't with the naked eye. In this photo, this was an [inaudible] ASP and to be able to see the light shadows and water on the ball leaves with something very special. When you're looking at macro photography, think of putting yourself in the place of the subject that you are trying to capture. For example, in this photo, think of yourself as the butterfly being on that beautiful flower in those trees. See what the world would look like from their point of view. You can also use different angles in order to capture a subject. This one was a beautiful bee on a sunflower up in Michigan that I was able to capture. In order to narrow down that focus on the subject, you can also create the bokeh effect, which is a blurred out background in everything else around that subject. In order to do that, you just need to use a low aperture, whether that's an [inaudible] or enough for in order to get that bokeh effect. Now one of the things to keep in mind with macro photography is you want to make sure that the focus is in the right place. For example in this photo, if you're focusing on a blade of grass, all the detail and the snake would be blown out. Since I was actually focused on the snake's head in this photo, all the details in the snake's head and none is really in the grass at all. When you're moving around trying to shoot macro, make sure you're looking for a unique elements like water, in order to add some complexity to the scene, just like it does on this flower. You can also add other scenes like sunsets and sunrises in order to create a greater contrast and the photo you're trying to take. Up next, we're going to do an intro to editing. 12. Intro to Editing: Welcome to editing. We're going to run through an edit but the best way to learn how to edit is honestly to just edit yourself. Your style is going to change over the years as you grow and develop, and you'll notice that really quick. Now we'll just go through some of the buttons up on the right-hand side. Upon the right you can see your technical specifications. If you want to crop, you can use the crop. Spot removal will be huge as we'll see in the next technical editing session. Red eye removal is more for portraits and you can use graduated filters which are just going to affect one area of the scene. If you want to make it black and white photo, you can just press that button but I highly recommend editing a photo first and then seeing what it looks like in black and white. Temperature is going to allow you to adjust for a warm or cool situation. Tint will allow you to add a green or purple hint to the photo. Exposure and contrasts are great to make adjustments after you've edited, but I don't recommend starting with them as it can totally change the look of your photo. We're going to pull highlights down and that's going to lighten up the sky in the photo. Pull some shadows out so we can expose the forest. We're going to leave whites where they're at and then we're going to pull blacks up a little bit as well. We're going to pull clarity. Texture and clarity are very similar. Clarity is just going to add a little bit of darkness back into the photo. We're going to dehaze this photo as well, which will add some darker tones in the scene. Now vibrance and saturation are something that you need to figure out what you want to look like artistically. My colors are very vibrant and saturated because I come from painting and drawing but you need to figure out what works for you. If we want to make micro adjustments to highlights and colors, we can do that here. We'll pull the highlights down a little bit and then brighten up the scene a little, pull a little bit more darks and then add a few more shadows in. Using the hue, you can change some of the colors. So you can go from yellow to green or yellow to orange. If you want to use the saturation, you can pull some blues into the sky a little bit, add some more greens into the forest as well. Luminance is going to give us the ability to lighten the photo up a little bit. If we want to lighten some of that's sky up, we can add that there. Now looking at sharpening, we want to add some detail here. We're going to pull that up to a 120, which is right on the border of where you want to be, and then we're going to put the radius in detail and make that go across the whole scene. The masking is also going to make that smooth-out a little bit. You want to remove that chromatic aberration and enable the Profile Corrections for your lens. Now below that, we want to make sure the horizon is right. So we're going to hit Auto and let that auto adjust the level there, and if you want to add an artistic look, you can also add a vignet. Those are the basics of editing. Like I said, the best thing you can possibly do is go through alone and start editing as many photos as you can. You'll develop your own style that way. Now just keep in mind this is also a raw photo. Like I said, JPEG are compressed images and they don't edit well, I'll see you in the next lesson, Intro to Technical Editing. 13. Intro to Technical Editing: Welcome to technical editing. We're going to go through a couple of examples and show you some technical issues that can come up in here. First off, we're going to pull the highlights down, you can see that prevents those clouds from being blown out. I'm going to pull the shadows out, pull of the blacks output some clarity in, dehaze this a bit, add some saturation and vibrancy. Then we're going to adjust lights a little bit not too much for those cloud, to blow out of there, a little bit coloring, sharpen the image, then we're going to make sure we remove the chromatic aberration and enable the profile correction. We're going to look for dust spots. Now in order to find dust spots, at the Dehaze tool, you want to look really anywhere that's very clear. Now some spots are going to show up and those will actually be dust marched down in the water. But up in the sky, you can see there's clearly a dust spot up here. So what we're going to do, we're going to go and we're going to use the spot removal tool. When you hit that, it'll clone stamp it and then it's going to pull it out. Now we can pull the dehaze but it's normal and we've got a good image. You also want to make sure the highlights and the lights aren't blown out in the clouds. That's what will prevent you from ever selling professionally if you care to go down that road. This photo overall looks pretty good. Now we'll go through another example, marine lake up in Canada. We'll pull the highlights down to prevent that blow out in the clouds. We'll pull the shadows, we'll pull the blacks, add a little bit of white back in there, you're going to pull some clarity, dehaze this a little bit and then we're going to add some vibrancy and saturation. Pull these highlights down a little, lightened up, pull a little bit of the dark's out and then add a few shadows back. We'll sharpen the detail and then remove the chromatic aberration and enable the profile correction. Now a few of other things in this image, up in the corners, you can actually see where there's a little bit of a big net that's actually from the NB filter on there. So we're actually going to use the clone stamp tool to remove that. Now in the bottom right hand corner we have the same problem. We're going to use the clone stamp tool as well. Now up here, when you zoom in, you are also going to be able to see some dust spots. Now dust spots don't seem like a big deal but if you ever go to sell professionally, it can ruin your reputation in a moment. So we'll go through and we'll try and clean up any of the dust issues that we see. A good way to spot dust spots is to pull the dehaze to as far as you can and spot dust spot through that. Now, keep in mind the higher your aperture goes, the more likely you are to have dust spots. For example, an F-22 would have more dust spots than an F-16 which has more than an F-10. Dust Spots don't really start showing up until you're around an F-5.6, so keep that in mind when you're doing macro, you're probably not going to have that issue. One of the other technical flaws that can pop up is when you have very vibrant and saturated colors. In the sky you can see that when it's saturated, those colors start to band together and that's known as technical defect as well. Now, technical issues can arise from a multitude of things, it could be equipment, it could be the way you're shooting, it could be the way you're editing; there's a ton of different issues that can arise in editing. The key is to go through and technically edit your photo so that it's as good as it can possibly be. Down the road you're going to become a better photographer, a better editor and you'll be able to spot and eliminate these issues a lot quicker than you can now. Just give yourself time, continually work on your craft and try to spot these issues as they arise before you publish your photos. Up next, I'm going to leave you with some closing comments. 14. Closing Comments: Congratulations, you made it. We covered everything from the fundamentals and concepts of photography to shooting sunsets and waterfalls, all the way to technical editing. This was a very information dense class, but I hope you were able to take away some great principles of shooting nature photography from this course. Please leave a review and let me know how I can serve you better in the future and make these classes better for you. I look forward to seeing your photos in the class forum. Let's connect on social media so that we can share in each other's artistic journeys. The best piece of advice I can give you is this. Be yourself. No one else can bring your artistic abilities and create a vision to life except for you. Remember, when you change your perspective, you inspire the world. Now, get out there and shoot this beautiful planet.