Winter’s here, and it’s brought early sunsets that handicap outdoor photography. But there’s plenty of opportunities indoors. Candles are a natural here. They’re easy to get, and around Christmas they’re often right at hand. Read on to learn how to handle the technical aspect of a shoot like this, plus some ideas for arranging the candles.

Every photographer was a beginner once, unless they’re a beginner right now. Every photographer has their style and their angle, but in general beginners share a lot of similar habits that could be called mistakes. Maybe you’re making some of them?

No more walking the mountaintops waiting for better weather! You’ll find scenes for macro photography everywhere around you—or you can create them on your own. Miniature abstract compositions don’t demand any complicated ideas, and yet they can still be a delight to the eyes.

Digital photo processing opens up huge possibilities—everyone is free to edit photos to match their taste and their mood of the day. But this freedom can sometimes tie you up by leaving you with so many variants that you can’t even choose among them. Or at least, I know it happens to me—all the time.

The market today is flooded with ever-better zoom lenses built to cover practically every imaginable range. And yet there are still photographers who make do without any zoom at all. Is it really possible to stick to just one fixed lens and completely forget about all the other focal lengths?

Maybe you’ve been there—standing somewhere with a breathtaking nature scene in front of you. You pressed the trigger a few times, but for all the world you couldn’t get a picture that really showed the beauty you had before you. What was the problem?

Just about all of us shoot when we’re on the road. But the pictures that experienced photographers post on the Internet look a little different. Their exceptional shot locations definitely help, but their final looks actually owe a lot overall to computer edits. And meanwhile, these are rarely complicated tricks. In this article, you’ll find several common workflows that you too can use on your photos.

Many people think that tools for sharpening a photo on a computer are only useful when a botched shot has left the photo blurry. And they’re certainly useful then. But there are also other, more important cases where sharpening should be used. In fact, you should use it on practically every picture. Wondering why? Then read on.

Flowers and other plants can be compelling subjects, and you can get fancier than just photographing them the same way every time. Take inspiration from today’s article and read up on the why’s and how’s of composing when you’re photographing plants.