Nature Photography Day is an event created and promoted by the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA). It is an annual event—which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, on June 15^th, with the theme Ten Years of Discovery. Nature Photography Day was put together, according to the NANPA website, in order “to promote the enjoyment of nature photography, and to explain how images have been used to advance the cause of conservation and protect plants, wildlife, and landscapes locally and worldwide.”

Nature photography is a very diverse and interesting genre of photography. The intent of nature photography is to display natural elements. Examples of nature photography subjects include pictures of plants, wildlife scenes, landscapes, and shots of specific parts of nature close-up (macro). There are several magazines that include or put special focus on nature photography, such as: National Geographic Magazine, National Wildlife Magazine, Outdoor Photographer, and Nature’s Best Photography.

Personally, I’m not really an outdoor person, but one thing that does get me to enjoy my time outside is taking pictures of the beautiful things I find in nature. I tend to focus most on subjects like flowers and other plants—mostly because they don’t really move so they’re easy to capture. For me, nature photography is a way to encourage myself to notice and revel in details that I might have otherwise missed.

The best part of nature photography, in my opinion at least, is that there really isn’t any wrong photo. Of course, there can be bad pictures, ones that don’t turn out well or weren’t the shot you actually wanted, but the beauty of using nature as your photography subject is that while you might not get a great shot there is no wrong way to capture it. Nature is nature. It is beautiful and intricate, and anything that shows that is always right.

Resources:

North American Nature Photography Association

Photographs taken by Alicia Raab