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Mark Denney
@markdenneyphoto
Mark Denney is a professional landscape and outdoor photographer based in North Carolina, United States. After a 17-year career in the corporate world, he took a radical turn in his life in July 2018 to dedicate himself completely to nature photography and content creation. He describes himself as a naturally anxious person who found landscape photography a form of "Zen meditation," a tool that allows him to practice patience and disconnect from the fast pace while waiting for the precise moment when the right light appears to capture an image.
As an educator and lecturer, his work focuses on teaching the narrative capacity of photographs, encouraging his followers not to obsess over the final result, but to appreciate the photographic experience in its entirety. He is widely recognized for his YouTube channel, where he shares editing tutorials, composition tips, and vlogs of his van trips under the banner "Cameras, Vans, & The Great Outdoors." In addition to his teaching at workshops and his weekly newsletter The Morning Blaze, he is an ambassador for brands such as NiSi Optics and f-stop Gear, and his content has been featured in prestigious publications such as Outdoor Photographer Magazine and ShutterBug.
Previous videos
19
The Tool Lightroom Still Doesn’t Have — Until Now
Published: Apr 1, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 19 sec · 80K views
*👉 Join The Morning Blaze for weekly photography tips, editing workflows, and field insights:* * If you’ve ever used a sky mask in Adobe Lightroom and noticed that harsh halo or unrealistic edge where the sky meets the landscape, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most frustrating limitations in Lightroom, and surprisingly, there’s still no dedicated control to fix it directly. In this video, I’ll show you the exact…
Your Blown Highlights Are Not Ruined — Here’s the Fix
Published: Mar 25, 2026 · Duration: 12 min 14 sec · 25K views
*👉 Download the Free RAW Editing Guide* Stop guessing what to adjust, what to ignore, and when to stop. Most photographers assume that once highlights are blown, the photo is finished and there’s no way to fix it. I used to believe the same thing.
Your Exposure Isn’t Wrong - It’s Your Metering Mode
Published: Mar 18, 2026 · Duration: 12 min 54 sec · 12K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *👉 Stop second-guessing your settings. Get my free Camera Setup Guide so you can set your camera up once and focus on composition instead: If you’ve ever taken a photo that looked perfectly exposed according to your camera’s meter, only to get home and realize the image looks too dark or too bright, you’re not alone.
Why Your Photos All Look the Same
Published: Mar 11, 2026 · Duration: 12 min 26 sec · 11K views
*Use this link to get $25 off your PPA membership today! *👉 If you want to take your landscape photos from flat, lifeless RAW files to fully realized images with depth, color, and impact, I put together a free step by step editing course that walks through my entire workflow from start to finish. Download it here: Most photographers try to fix weak photos by adjusting camera settings, but more often than not the…
The Focus Mistake Many Photographers Make
Published: Mar 4, 2026 · Duration: 11 min 55 sec · 16K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *👉 Get the free focus stacking guide here:* Most landscape photographers have heard this advice: stop down to f/11 or f/16 and focus about one third of the way into the scene to get everything sharp. Sometimes that works.
Finally! Ultra Wide Filters Done Right
Published: Feb 25, 2026 · Duration: 11 min 24 sec · 13K views
*Check out the ultra wide filter kit here:* Ultra wide angle lenses create some of the most dramatic perspectives in landscape photography, but using filters on a bulb front element has traditionally meant oversized holders, extra adapters, and limited stacking options. It works, but it’s rarely simple. In this video, I take a closer look at a new magnetic filter kit designed specifically for ultra wide lenses,…
This is What Finishes a Photo
Published: Feb 18, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 45 sec · 19K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *👉 Get the free RAW photo editing guide:* A simple, start-to-finish workflow so you’re never guessing what to adjust or when to stop. Finishing a photo isn’t just about adjusting exposure, color, or contrast.
You’re Overthinking RAW Editing
Published: Feb 11, 2026 · Duration: 18 min 6 sec · 22K views
Use this link to get $25 off your PPA membership today! *👉 Download the Free RAW Editing Guide* Stop guessing what to adjust, what to ignore, and when to stop. Most photographers assume good photo editing is complicated.
Why This Camera Setting No Longer Matters
Published: Feb 4, 2026 · Duration: 14 min 16 sec · 19K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *👉 Get the free camera setup guide here:* Most landscape photographers rely on highlight warnings to guide their exposure decisions, believing they’re protecting important detail in the scene. But modern cameras capture far more information than these warnings suggest, and trusting them blindly often leads to exposures that are overly…
The Auto ISO Mistake Ruining Your Image Quality
Published: Jan 28, 2026 · Duration: 14 min 1 sec · 53K views
Use this link to get $25 off your PPA membership today! 👉 Get the free camera setup guide here: Auto ISO gets blamed for ruining image quality, but in most cases, the problem isn’t Auto ISO at all. It’s how the camera is configured.
You’re Missing This in Your Landscape Photos
Published: Jan 21, 2026 · Duration: 14 min 30 sec · 21K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Free Companion Video Course: Learn how to add depth & dimension to your landscape photos by addressing what’s often missing. 👉 Access the free course here: Landscape photos often fall short not because the scene wasn’t good or the edit was wrong, but because photography is a two-dimensional medium trying to represent a…
This Autofocus Setting is Costing You Sharp Photos
Published: Jan 14, 2026 · Duration: 8 min 27 sec · 134K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *Free Focus Stacking Guide* Sharp photos are not just about lenses, tripods, or technique. In this video, I break down a commonly overlooked autofocus setting that can quietly work against you and cost you sharp photos, even when everything feels right in the field.
One Simple Photography Goal for 2026
Published: Jan 7, 2026 · Duration: 6 min 52 sec · 10K views
*🌟Reserve Your FREE Copy of My Lightroom Colors Course🌟* Happy New Year! This video is all about a simple personal shift I’m making with my landscape photography as we begin 2026. Over the past few years I slowly drifted into the habit of shooting too much whenever I was on location, capturing endless variations of the same composition instead of slowing down and being truly intentional with each individual frame.
This Comment Ruined Photography in 2025
Published: Dec 31, 2025 · Duration: 2 min 44 sec · 35K views
*🌟Get My FREE Lightroom Colors Course🌟* In this final video of 2025, I talk about the comment that ruined photography for those that shared their work online this year. It usually sounds like a compliment, but it reflects a bigger shift in how we consume photography today. Similar to the old “it looks Photoshopped” comment, it reveals how easily genuine moments of light, planning, and experience are now mistaken…
The Best Photo Editing Advice You've Never Heard Of
Published: Dec 24, 2025 · Duration: 10 min 39 sec · 19K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *🎁Get My FREE Lightroom Colors Course🎁* Knowing how to edit a photo is important, but knowing when to stop editing is what separates a good photo from a great one. Most landscape photographers struggle with deciding when an image is actually finished, which often leads to overediting, flat contrast, or a loss of mood that was present…
The Questions Every Landscape Photographer Eventually Asks
Published: Dec 17, 2025 · Duration: 13 min 25 sec · 13K views
*🔥FREE Color Editing Course🔥* Landscape photography has a way of feeling simple on the surface, yet quietly complicated once you're in it. The longer you shoot, the more questions start to creep in. Questions about editing, creativity, gear, consistency, burnout, and whether you're even focusing on the right things in the first place.
Lightroom Just Fixed a Problem We’ve All Ignored
Published: Dec 10, 2025 · Duration: 9 min 30 sec · 80K views
*🎁FREE Lightroom Gift for the Holidays🎁* Lightroom just introduced an update that quietly fixes one of the biggest color problems in landscape photography, and most photographers never even realized it was holding their edits back. In this video, I break down what Lightroom just added, why it matters, and how it can completely change the way you control color across your images. You'll see how this update solves…
The Editing Trick Most Landscape Photographers Get Wrong
Published: Dec 3, 2025 · Duration: 11 min 12 sec · 11K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *🌟Get My FREE Lightroom Colors Course🌟* In this video I break down one of the most misunderstood techniques in landscape photography and why it can either elevate your images with beautiful atmosphere or completely ruin them with softness and haze. This simple edit has been around since the film era, yet most photographers still use…
AI is NOT the Enemy of Photography - Something Worse Is
Published: Nov 26, 2025 · Duration: 13 min 12 sec · 21K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. When most photographers worry about the rise of AI they tend to overlook the much bigger issue that has been limiting our images since the beginning of photography. We live in a world full of depth and dimension yet every time we take a photograph that entire three dimensional experience collapses into a flat two dimensional frame.
