Capture the Moment!
Since 2013, I’ve published hundreds of blog posts on all aspects of photography. Some are aimed at helping photographers with their technique, settings, and equipment, but others describe my exhibitions, workshops, and adventures in Africa, Antarctica, and beyond.
Feel free to browse chronologically or click on the heading above any post for specific categories, such as Equipment, Trips or Hints and Tips.
If you’d like to write a guest post, please drop me a line on +44 7942 800921 or at nick@nickdalephotography.com.
(Please note that some posts contain affiliate links from which I can earn a small commission.)
Top Tips for Wildlife Photography at Dawn
There is something magical about the quiet times just before dawn — the world only half awake, the air sharp, and animals stirring. Taking wildlife photos in such conditions is highly rewarding and equally challenging. Animals are most active at dawn, and light shifts every minute. Every decision, from camera settings to position, affects how the story unfolds in your frame.
The Future of Photo Editing: How AI Transforms Post-Processing
Photography has always been about more than pressing the shutter. From the darkroom practices of the early 20th century to the digital workflows of today, post-processing has defined how images are refined, perfected, and shared. Now, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancing at a remarkable speed, photo editing is entering a new era. AI promises not only to automate technical corrections but also to fundamentally reshape creativity, accessibility, and authenticity in photography.
Top 100 Photos: Before and After
How important is editing? Some wildlife photographers religiously refuse to add or subtract anything, but photo software is so powerful these days that they might be missing out—especially if they don’t use generative AI! Do you believe your photos should be as representative as possible or as visually appealing? Are you a journalist or an artist?
Top Wildlife Photo Editing Services Every Photographer Should Try in 2025
Wildlife photography brings great rewards but also plenty of obstacles. Bright sunlight, sudden movements, and unpredictable surroundings can make it tough to get the perfect shot. Most images still need some fine-tuning later, which is why professional photo editing services are so valuable.
Editing Wildlife Photos: Beginner Tips
Learn how to edit wildlife photos with tips on noise reduction, colour correction and composition to make your images sharp and natural-looking.
How to Personalise Your Photos
Wildlife photographers sometimes talk about how flattered they are when someone tells them, “I knew immediately it was one of your photos.” I’m not sure how true that is (!), but it raises a few questions. Is it important to have a certain ‘look’? What should it be? How can you achieve it? Let’s discuss all those questions—and more!
Experiment with Lens Blur
Lightroom's latest release (13.0.1) has just come out, and it offers a cool new AI feature called Lens Blur that works with any image format. It's labelled 'Early Access', so it's experimental and doesn't (yet) work with masking or presets or include sharpening, but it's a great way to add creative blur in post.
First Impressions of Luminar Neo
I recently became an affiliate for Skylum’s Luminar Neo. This is post-processing software similar to Lightroom, and I thought I’d try it out to see what it was like.
A Lightroom Trick to Separate Subject from Background
Photographs are flat, 2D images, but how can you make them appear three-dimensional? Inspired by a couple of videos by Matt Kloskowski and Steve Perry, here are a few Lightroom tricks to create depth by separating your subject from the background.
Bulk Editing in Lightroom
Wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein thinks I take too many pictures, and he’s probably right. I once took over 38,000 shots of seabirds on a cruise ship one afternoon in Antarctica! Personally, I blame my Sony a1’s high frame rate—I mean, what’s a poor photographer to do…?!
Lightroom Presets
Everybody seems to be selling Lightroom presets these days, but I hardly use them.
The problem with ‘adopting’ someone else’s presets is that they probably won’t do what you want them to do. Yes, they could probably make a dramatic difference to some photos, but you lose control because they are almost always bundles of adjustments, not all of which are necessary.
How to Enlarge a Photo
Gigapixel AI is the ‘ugly duckling’ of the Topaz Labs suite of software programs, but it can be just as useful as Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI if you need to enlarge an image, say for printing.
How to Reduce Noise
I’ve recently discovered the Topaz Labs suite of software products that includes Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI and DeNoise AI. This article discusses how best to use the last of these.
How to Sharpen an Image
I use Adobe Lightroom for editing all my images, and it’s a very good program, so generally I have no complaints.
However, there’s one thing I never do in Lightroom, and that’s sharpening.
The problem is that ‘sharpening’ in Lightroom is not really sharpening at all. It’s contrast. And there’s a big difference.
Post-processing in Lightroom
There are two main steps I go through to edit my images:
1. Rating and adding metadata
2. Preparing for upload to stock agencies
Microstock Upload Procedure
I earn around 35% of my photography revenue from stock agencies and microstock sites. I started off submitting all my content at once to around 25 agencies, but I’ve gradually changed my workflow.
What has Lightroom Ever Done for us?
…Apart from cropping images, adding vignettes, changing highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, chromatic aberration, camera profile etc, etc, etc!
Lightroom Workflow
A few years ago, I started doing all my photographic post-processing in Lightroom. It's the program used by most professional photographers and is reasonably user-friendly, I got to grips with Lightroom mostly by watching a very useful series of YouTube videos by Anthony Morganti, but this article is just a description of my basic workflow.
Lightroom Settings
In the last year, I've started doing all my photographic post-processing in Lightroom. It's the program used by most professional photographers and is reasonably user-friendly, but the problem is choosing all the right settings.