The entries in each year's AMC Photo Contest can often be broken into just a few major categories: Landscapes, Macro (those up-close-and-personal looks at flora and fauna), and People. What can you do to improve your images and impress the judges? Here are their tips, in their own words:

Landscapes
By Jerry Monkman

Maximize the Light: The best way to improve your photos is to learn how to use the right light for your subject. I love to photograph with two types of natural light: the even light under overcast skies and the warm, low-contrast light just after sunrise and just before sunset. Use the middle of sunny days to scout out photo locations for the end of the day.

Use the warm colors of late-day and early-morning sunshine to light big landscape scenes. Your photos will have colors that are more vibrant instead of appearing washed out, and the low angle of the light will allow you to capture details in your shadows as well as the rich textures of your subject matter. The only rule on overcast days is to avoid including the sky in your photo, as it will appear as a big, boring, white distraction.

LEARN MORE
See Jerry Monkman demonstrate three important photography tips in this brief video.
View past photo contest winners and learn how to enter the current contest at outdoors.org/photocontest.

Simplify: Keep your compositions simple. The outdoors is full of distracting elements that you need to crop out, preferably before you download any images to your computer. Pick the most important two or three elements in the scene and make sure everything else is minimized or eliminated completely from view. If there is something in the scene that doesn't help tell your story, keep it out of your picture. Also, pay attention to the background and edges of your photo and be sure they are clean and don't take away interest from your main subject.

Read more of Jerry's photo advice in this AMC Outdoors article, "Photo Tips From a Pro"

Jerry Monkman's new books are A Photographer’s Guide to Acadia National Park and AMC's Discover Acadia National Park, 3rd Edition. He leads destination photo workshops throughout New England and also teaches digital imaging seminars in Portsmouth, N.H. You can learn more about his books and upcoming photo workshops at www.jerryandmarcymonkman.com.

Macro
By Allison Bell

My natural history interests have inspired me to take thousands of plant, insect, and small animal images. Close-up photography is required and reveals wonderful color, texture, and details. For those traveling outdoors with limited baggage, fancy equipment is not an option and doesn't need to be. Today's compact digital cameras, with macro settings, can take terrific pictures. Here are two low-tech tips:

Look sharp: Even with a narrow depth of field, the most important element of your shot should be in focus: the eye of the newt, the center of the flower. Avoid blurriness from camera shake. If you don't have a tripod, improvise—rest the camera against a rock, a tree, your boot, or a stick jammed in the ground to improve stability.

Make like a cloud: Bright sun may create too much contrast for your camera to handle, resulting in under- or overexposure of parts of your image. When shooting white flowers with dark leaves, for example, wait for a passing cloud or use your own shadow to even out the range of light.

Allison Bell is a photographer and designer in Northampton, Mass., specializing in cultural and natural history projects. With Nancy Slack, Ph.D., she is coauthor of AMC Field Guide to the New England Alpine Summits and the Adirondack Mountain Club's Adirondack Alpine Summits. She was a Grand Prize winner in the first AMC Outdoors photo contest in 1995.

People
By Paul Mozell

Many of the images we receive for the AMC Photo Contest are family snapshots rather than photographs. So what is the difference? My definition of snapshots is: quick images of family members and friends that preserve memories of a special moment, smile, or family trip. You know the shot—I take them too! But snapshots usually are of interest only to your family and friends, and thus have limited appeal in a magazine or photo contest. Here are a few pointers to improve your photographs of people in the outdoors.

1. Shoot an activity, not a grinning smile. Compose your photograph so that it appears that the subject is not aware of your presence. As you shoot, your subject will become less aware of you and the photographs will be more spontaneous.
2. Photograph people moving toward you, not away. Sit in the bow of your canoe and turn around to photograph the paddler in the stern. Run or ski up the trail and shoot people coming in your direction. When they pass, don't shoot their tail ends.
3. Use the "sports" setting on cameras that have a choice of scene modes. This will optimize the camera to capture motion.
4. Show people in their environment. Use a wide-angle setting to show the footbridge, stream crossing, or ridgeline being crossed.
5. Study the photographs of people in outdoors publications for inspiration.

Paul Mozell is a photographer whose work has appeared in AMC publications since the 1970s. He has been a judge in this contest every year since its inception, except one. You can see galleries of his photos at www.mozellstudios.com, and his writing about photography on his blog, photo-review.net.