- The Golden Rule of Landscape Photography
- Become Married to Your Tripod
- Shoot in Aperture Priority Mode
- Composing Great Landscapes
- The Trick to Shooting Waterfalls
- A Tip for Shooting Forests
- Where to Put the Horizon Line
- Getting More Interesting Mountain Shots
- The Trick for Warmer Sunrises and Sunsets
- Turn on "The Blinkies" to Keep More Detail
- How to Deal with the Dreaded Blinkies
- How to Show Size
- Don't Set Up Your Tripod. Not Yet
- The Trick to Getting Richer Colors
- What to Shoot in Bad Weather
- Atmosphere Is Your Friend
- Getting Rid of Lens Flare—The Manual Way
- The Landscape Photographer’s Secret Weapon
- Keeping Your Horizons Straight
- Shooting on Cloudy Days
- Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 1
- Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 2
- Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 3
- Faking Panoramas
- Why You Need a Wide-Angle Lens
- Want to Take Things Up a Notch? Shoot Low
Turn on “The Blinkies” to Keep More Detail
Okay, they’re technically not called “the blinkies” (that’s our nickname for them), they’re actually called highlight warnings (or highlight alerts) and having this turned on, and adjusting for it, is a critical part of getting properly exposed landscape shots. This warning shows exactly which parts of your photo have been overexposed to the point that there’s no detail in those areas at all. You’ll be amazed at how often this happens. For example, even on an overcast day, clouds can blow out (turn solid white with no detail) easily, so we keep our camera’s highlight warning turned on. Here’s how it works: When the highlight warning is turned on and you look at the shot in your LCD monitor, those blown out areas will start to blink like a slow strobe light. Now, these blinkies aren’t always bad—if you shoot a shot where the sun is clearly visible, it’s going to have the blinkies (I don’t mean sunlight, I mean the red ball of the sun). There’s not much detail on the suface of the sun, so I’d let that go. However, if your clouds have the blinkies, that’s a different story. Probably the quickest way to adjust for this is to use your camera’s exposure compensation control (covered on the next page). For now, let’s focus on making sure your highlight warning (blinkies) is turned on. If you have a Nikon camera, press the playback button so you can see the photos on your memory card. Now, push the down arrow button to see file information, then the right arrow button until the word Highlights appears below your photo on the LCD monitor. If you have a Canon camera, press the playback button to view your images and then press the Info button to see the blinkies.