Updated---Not to be blunt-BUT-Submissions--- Once again I am feeling that we need to revisit the topic of submissions. I invite you all to read the "sticky" blog entry below which which was written by one of the mods of the group =austinboothphoto and talks about our judging guidelines as to what gets in the group and what doesn't. Honestly I had to decline many photographs this morning, and franky and straight up honestly, we don't have the time to give feedback as to why your photo was declined. There aren't enough hours in the day honestly, and many of us are working photographers with our own DA accounts to maintain as well. One thing I would suggest everyone to do is actually LOOK through the galleries within the group, both themed and featured and see if your work is AS GOOD as what is there now before you ever submit something.



If it is a cat shot or a flower, it better be damn good is all I can say. We are also not real hip on Zoo shots, we prefer animal photography which show them in the wild within their own environment. We do allow for photos however that do not look "man made" taken in a captive atmosphere.

Now please revisit the blog entry below.
^kkart



A general guideline of our judging criteria-- by =austinboothphoto

Here at Photography-APN we are pretty picky about what makes it into the galleries. The Featured gallery is a collection of what we feel are the very very best nature photos which are nearly flawless and have a big WOW factor when you see them. The featured gallery is closed to submissions except by the suggestion of moderators and contributors to keep the standards of quality in the gallery high. If you see a deviation which you feel is featured material please note one of the moderators or contributors except for ^kkart because he is the moderator of the Animals Plants and Nature gallery for all of deviant art and he already gets enough notes for daily deviation suggestions. So help him keep his in-box clean by suggesting a featured photo to one of the other moderators/contributors. Please don't suggest your own photos, this is frowned upon because otherwise our in-boxes would be flooded with people suggesting their own photos. We feel a featured photo should be good enough that someone else should feel compelled enough by it to suggest it.

The other galleries are open to submissions from all our members but there is a 2 submissions per month per member limit to help keep our in-boxes from getting flooding by people submitting their whole gallery, we have a hard enough time keeping up with the 2 per month. While the non-featured galleries are open to submissions by members, in order to keep the quality of work submitted to the galleries top notch we are still very picky about what we accept into the other galleries. We want the images in this group to represent the very best of nature photography here on deviantART. If you came to this group to learn and improve your skills and to be inspired by the work of others then you came to the right place. If you just want to submit your images and are not prepared to accept critique and possible rejection of your work into the galleries then there are other groups out there for that with less strict acceptance policies for their galleries. One such group is #NatureCrazy.

There are many well established rules and guidelines in the world of nature photography (not just on this forum) about what goes into a good nature photo and we take those guidelines into consideration when judging whether or not to accept a photo. Of course these are only guidelines and there can be good photos which break the rules but it has to be intentionally ignoring the rules and for a purpose. It should be obvious that the photo is better that way, you shouldn't have to explain to us why you broke the rules, the photo should speak for itself.

Kkart recently posted a blog on some of the possible reasons for a deviations rejection and I will repeat them here as they are very relevant to this post:

* Huge ugly disturbing watermark, we are here to look at photos not a pretty graphic with your name on it that covers the whole thing (this includes the ugly deviantART watermark).
* Technical reasons like poor focus, poor composition (like a centered subject), bad exposure (too dark, too bright), poor light (sorry but this means almost all images shot at mid-day especially for landscapes)
* Wrong category
* Too big / too small file resolution (700-1000 pixels wide for horizontals and no more than 700 pixels tall for verticals is about right)
* Heavy manipulation/Heavy post process
* Unnatural look over all.
* Animals need to be in their natural habitat. Not in cages or zoo background. Or sitting on chairs. (you can submit shots of captive animals but there should not be any sign that they are in captivity)
* Insects need to be in sharp focus. Not the leaf they are on.
* Flowers and animals are common. So they need to be really exceptional and unique for selection.
* Sky shots should not be 'ONLY' the sky. There needs to be a little land or water and preferably something else interesting in the composition.
* Composition is not thoroughly thought out.
* Images should be outstanding, not of a snapshot like quality. (shooting away with no thought process behind the image)
* Image has a tilted horizon line

These are not randomly selected guidelines specific to this group these are widely accepted guidelines among the top nature photographers about what goes into a good nature photo.

I am going to focus mainly on improving the technical aspects of your photography, composition, exposure, quality of light and focus. Again these basic guidelines I am discussing in this have long been established for decades by the masters of nature photography and it is these well established guidelines we use to help us decide on submitted photos (but there are rare exceptions to the rules).

Composition: The overall placement and framing of all the elements of a photo. The use of shapes and patterns to lead the eye around the photo and keep the eye in the frame. A good composition should have some sort of main subject and anything that could distract the viewer from that main subject should be excluded if possible. Sometimes when you are out taking photos and have a really cool subject but there is something distracting that there is just no way to keep out of the frame you have to come to terms with the fact that the photo just may not work. It would take a lot more room than I have in this article to go into depth on composition so I am liking to helpful tutorials at the end of this article.

Exposure: The overall brightness of the photo. A properly exposed nature photo usually should not have blown out highlights, it should not be overly bright or overly dark. Landscape master Ansel Adams did extensive work in the darkroom to ensure that the dark areas as well as the light areas of his images still retained some detail and that the dark areas were not too dark and the light areas were not too bright and completely blown out. There are however, exceptions to the rule, and over or under exposure can be used to create mood. There is usually some sort of balance to that over or under exposure though such as a scene blanketed in fog and mostly very light gray except for a lone dark tree to contrast with the light.

Quality of light: Without light there would be no photography, a photo is basically an image created from light being directed through a lens onto a photo sensitive medium such as film or a digital sensor. The quality of the light is very important in making a successful nature photograph or any photo. In nature photography we mainly use natural sunlight and the best light is usually about 30 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset. This time is called “the magic hour” although you will hear photographers refer to this time of day by many different names. Mid-day light usually has far too much contrast resulting in blown highlights and harsh shadows resulting in an image lacking a lot of the detail you were able to see with your human eyes. There are a few rare cases where mid-day light works but most of the time the photo just isn't going to be as good as it could be if it was taken at a different time of the day. It may be inconvenient to get up early for sunrise or wait for sunset but mid-day photos usually just don't cut it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go out during the day and take photos because its definitely good to practice other things like composition but you need to be aware that most of the photos taken at this time won't be great photos because they won't have great light. All the top pro landscape photographers get their one of a kind images because they are extremely patient in waiting for the right light and they often spend a lot of time in the same area to get those images. They will scout out their sunset/sunrise photo spots during the day and then return to those spots time and time again until they get the perfect sunset/sunrise light. Nature photography takes a lot of patience and hard work. If you just casually take photos on hikes mainly during the day your chances of getting those one of a kind amazing images are going to be much lower, sorry but that is just the way it is. Look at the photos of the late Galen Rowell who is possibly one of the most famous nature photographers of all time after Ansel Adams. The vast majority of Galen's photos were taken in early morning or late in the day light, he has countless magical sunrise and sunset photos all taken with 35mm film.

Focus: This is another big one on here. We get a lot of submissions that are out of focus or what should be the main subject of the photo. A lot of those are macro shots which usually have a shallower depth of field. The best way to increase the depth of field if it is too narrow to get your subject in focus is to use a smaller f-stop (bigger number). Imagine a photo of an insect on a leaf, the insect is the main subject and it should be in sharp focus. Lets take the situation of an extreme close up of the insect where you can't bring everything into sharp focus, you should make sure that the face is in focus and especially the eyes. In landscapes you will almost always want to try and have everything near and far in focus and you will want to use a smaller f-stop to maximize depth of field. Although you don't want to use too small of an f-stop because that can also cause sharpness issues. Limited depth of field can work in some cases like in a wildlife photo to help isolate your subject from a distracting background by blurring it but the main subject must be in very sharp focus!

This article was just a very basic overview and there is a lot more to each of these elements of a photo than I put it here. Here are some good tutorials I feel are worth looking at to improve your photography.


Tutorials

Composition:

10 top photography composition rules (an overview of composition basics)
[link]

Landscape Photography Composition – Part 1 (how to expose landscapes)
[link]

Landscape Photography Composition – Part 2
[link]

Crafting Creative Compositions: An Alliterative Guide to Advanced Artistic Achievement (a more advanced composition tutorial)
[link]

Exposure:

Exposure (a great overview of exposure basics)
[link]

Exposure from one beginner to another
[link]

Shutter Speed and Aperture (two most important factors in controlling exposure)
[link]

ISO rating for film speed (Ok it says film but it also covers ISO for digital which is basically sensor sensitivity)
[link]


Quality of light:

The Art of Communicating with Light (a good tutorial on light in nature photography)
[link]

Composing With Light – Part 1
[link]

Focus:

The importance of focus and quick tips on how to get it right (a few quick tips on focus)
[link]

Sharpening Photos for the Web: A Simple Introduction (sharpening photos in editing software is usually necessary just make sure you don't oversharpen)
[link]

Focus is much more strait forward than the rest of it but nonetheless people still submit out of focus shots on here. Other than making sure your main subject is in focus there isn't much more to focusing your lens. Shutter speed and aperture are however, related and many of the focus problems are related to poor use of those settings (for example too slow of a shutter speed to capture a moving subject or to wide of an aperture creating too narrow of a depth of field.

Other Helpful Tutorials:

Digital Graduated Filter (a simple technique to make ensure both the sky and foreground are correctly exposed in scenes where the ordinarily would not be)
[link]

Digital Blending (a more in depth tutorial taking the technique in the last tutorial a step further)
[link]

Exposure Blending in Photoshop (yet another tutorial on the same technique)
[link]

11 Surefire Landscape Photography Tips
[link]

Landscape Photography Tips
[link]

Wildlife photography tips
[link]

Wildlife Photography tips (same title different article)
[link]

Macro Photography Tips for Point and Shoot Cameras
[link]

Macro Photography
[link]