When you photograph a beautiful landscape or an animal, placement of the horizon line can make or break the image. If you place the horizon line in the center of the image, your viewer doesn’t know which part of the image is the most important. You make that decision when you visualize the resulting photograph in your mind’s eye.

Photographing landscapes after dusk is not as easy as photographing during the day. Twilight offers low light, which means you’ll have to increase the ISO setting, and many cameras are extremely noisy at high ISO settings.Here are some tips for the aspiring twilight photographer: Scout your shooting location.

You might be surprised to learn that using your camera's flash outside is an important aspect of taking beautiful portraits of people. In this video, photographer and Dummies author Julie Adair King explains why, and she provides other valuable advice for shooting outdoor portraits.

In this video, Dummies author Julie Adair King tells you how you can get great family photos at home — even when your kids are being rowdy. Learn about choosing a good background and lighting the scene.

When it comes to checking exposure, the image shown on the digital camera monitor can be misleading. The actual image may be brighter or darker than what you see onscreen because the display is affected by the ambient light in which you view the image and on the brightness of the monitor itself.For more reliable exposure guidance, find out whether your camera offers an exposure meter, histogram, or highlights display mode.

Capturing beautiful landscape images isn't always easy, and ticking off items on a checklist might not seem like a useful technique in photography, but ensuring you have all equipment with you on a photo shoot ensures you can focus on snapping pictures instead of discovering you've left something behind.By the same token, readying your equipment upon your return lets you grab your camera bag and go capture more landscape and nature pictures.

Lighting is a very important aspect of digital photography. As a photographer, it’s your job to use that light in the best possible way. The lighting process starts with being able to measure the light and determine the best settings to correctly expose for the available light, using a flash to add some light to a scene when needed, and using light to illuminate or hide areas in your images.

Understanding the art and science of exposure in digital photography involves three main settings on your camera (which is probably a digital SLR, or dSLR): aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Adjusting these interrelated settings will alter the look of your photos, and when you understand how these settings work, you'll begin to take the kinds of eye-catching and impressive photos that you probably dreamed about when you first invested in a quality digital camera.

Point-and-shoot cameras can be used to photograph nature. The type of nature photography you intend to pursue will dictate the type of camera you purchase. Point-and-shoot cameras have smaller sensors than digital SLRs and are more susceptible to generating digital noise that is noticeable in rendered images. The optics of point-and-shoot cameras are smaller and are not as good as digital SLR lenses.