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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
Every Photographer Needs a Camera They Don’t Need
Published: Aug 19, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 13 sec · 21K views
*👉 Spend less time fighting your camera and more time making photographs. Download my FREE Camera Setup Guide for the settings I use to simplify my landscape photography workflow: On paper, the Fujifilm X100VI loses to my Nikon Z8 in almost every measurable category. It has a smaller sensor, one fixed lens, less flexibility, and doesn’t fill an obvious gap in my professional landscape photography setup.
Lightroom Can Finally Do This
Published: Aug 12, 2026 · Duration: 11 min 43 sec · 24K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *🎁 Stop Guessing Your Way Through Every Edit* Download my FREE RAW Editing Guide and follow the complete start-to-finish workflow I use to decide what to adjust, what to leave alone, and when an edit is finished: Adobe’s August Lightroom update finally addresses one of its most annoying masking problems: hard, unnatural edges that can…
This Tiny Camera Fixed Something I Broke
Published: Aug 5, 2026 · Duration: 12 min 45 sec · 50K views
*Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.* *📸 Free 2026 Photo Editing Guide: Before you move a single slider, follow this simple workflow to start every edit with a plan. Download it free here: Four years ago, I tested the Fuji X100V, enjoyed every minute with it, and then sent it back because I couldn’t figure out where it fit into my photography. I regretted that decision…
This Popular Focus Setting Makes Photography Harder
Published: Jul 29, 2026 · Duration: 9 min 56 sec · 14K views
*👉 Stop fighting your camera. Download my free Camera Setup Guide and use the settings I rely on to simplify my workflow and spend more time making photographs. One of the most popular autofocus settings in landscape photography may actually be making the entire process more difficult than it needs to be.
Pro vs Beginner: The Same RAW Photo
Published: Jul 22, 2026 · Duration: 14 min 51 sec · 14K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *Learn how I approach editing my RAW photos from start to finish in my free RAW Editing Guide:* * Have you ever looked back at an old photo edit and thought, “What was I thinking?” In this video, I revisit a landscape photo I edited nearly seven years ago, compare it to the original RAW file, and re-edit it from scratch using the way I…
One Thing Changed How I Edit Every Photo
Published: Jul 15, 2026 · Duration: 11 min 28 sec · 22K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *📸 Free 2026 Photo Editing Guide: Before you move a single slider, follow this simple workflow to start every edit with a plan.* *Download it free here: After editing thousands of landscape photos over the last decade, I’ve realized the biggest improvement in my photography had very little to do with Lightroom itself. It came from…
"Lightroom" Couldn’t Do This - Until Now
Published: Jul 8, 2026 · Duration: 11 min 14 sec · 46K views
*Use this link to get $25 off your PPA membership today! About a month ago, Adobe added two new editing features, and I made a video covering both of them. At the time, I thought one of those features was the clear winner.
Most Landscape Photographers Focus on the Wrong Things
Published: Jul 1, 2026 · Duration: 11 min 49 sec · 12K views
*🎨FREE Lightroom Colors Course🌟* *Learn the exact color workflow I use to create natural, vibrant landscape photos in Lightroom.* *Get Instant Access → Over the last 10 years, there are a lot of things I’ve stopped caring about as a landscape photographer. Not because they don’t matter, but because I’ve realized we often spend too much time focusing on the wrong things. In this video, I share the 10 things I no…
Don’t Press The Shutter Until You Check This
Published: Jun 24, 2026 · Duration: 15 min 7 sec · 13K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *✅ Avoid The Small Mistakes That Ruin Great Photos — Download My Free 10-Second Checklist:* * Have you ever gotten home from a shoot, opened a photo you were excited about, and immediately spotted something you should have seen in the field? A distraction near the edge of the frame, a missed focus point, or a composition that could…
Photography Rules I Followed for Too Long
Published: Jun 17, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 32 sec · 14K views
*Want sharper landscape photos? Download my Free Focus Stacking Guide* *👉 When I first started learning landscape photography, there were a handful of rules I never questioned. I followed them because they were repeated so often by photographers I respected that I simply assumed they had to be true.
I Ignored This RAW Editing Step for Years
Published: Jun 10, 2026 · Duration: 14 min 2 sec · 32K views
👉 Check out DxO PureRAW 6 and save 15% with discount code DENNEY I've heard photographers talk about DxO PureRAW for years, but I never really understood what it did or why so many people used it. As someone who does almost all of my editing in Lightroom and Photoshop, I've never been interested in adding extra software to my workflow unless there was a clear benefit. So over the last few weeks, I decided to test…
I Think We Got Back Button Focus Wrong
Published: Jun 3, 2026 · Duration: 9 min 12 sec · 27K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *👉 Download my FREE Camera Setup Guide and see how I actually configure my camera in the field for landscape photography: Back button focus has become one of the most recommended camera settings in photography, especially for landscape photographers. But after using it for years, I started wondering whether I was using it because it…
“Lightroom” Finally Added This
Published: May 27, 2026 · Duration: 12 min 8 sec · 64K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *Learn how I approach editing my RAW photos from start to finish in my free RAW Editing Guide:* * Lightroom masking has come a long way over the past few years, but there has still been a few limitations that always felt just slightly incomplete… especially when it came to shaping color inside local adjustments and creating smoother…
You Slowly Stop Seeing This
Published: May 20, 2026 · Duration: 9 min 6 sec · 13K views
*Learn how I approach editing subtle light, atmosphere, and mood in my free RAW Editing Guide:* * After spending the last few weeks photographing the massive peaks and dramatic light of Patagonia, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to something completely different back in the Great Smoky Mountains. Quiet fog drifting through trees. Small moments most photographers would probably walk right past.
You Think Your Camera’s Safe… Until This Happens
Published: May 13, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 38 sec · 75K views
*👉 Set your camera up once and never fight your settings again. Get my free Camera Setup Guide here A couple days ago while photographing waterfalls in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I slipped on a rock and dropped my Nikon Z8 and 14-24mm lens completely underwater. What followed over the next several days was one of the most stressful photography experiences I’ve ever had.
This Habit Held My Photography Back for 10 Years
Published: May 6, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 24 sec · 54K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 👉 Download my FREE Camera Setup Guide and set your camera up once so you never have to fight your settings again: For a long time, I believed that simply spending more time behind the camera would naturally make me a better landscape photographer. But somewhere along the way, I realized something uncomfortable...the habits that helped…
You’re Giving Too Much Space to the Wrong Parts of Your Photo
Published: Apr 29, 2026 · Duration: 13 min 57 sec · 16K views
Go to to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. *👉 Set your camera up once & never fight your settings again. Download my free Camera Setup Guide Here: If you’ve ever looked at the back of your camera and felt like something about your photo just wasn’t working, even though the light was good and the settings were right, the problem might not be your exposure, your lens, or the…
Fixing White Balance Makes Photos Worse — Here’s the Fix
Published: Apr 22, 2026 · Duration: 12 min 54 sec · 21K views
*👉 Download the Free RAW Editing Guide* *Stop guessing what to adjust, what to ignore, and when to stop.* * Fixing white balance seems like the responsible thing to do when editing your photos, but in many situations it can actually make your images look worse. This is especially true during blue hour and golden hour, when the color in the scene is not a mistake to be corrected but a mood to be preserved. In this…
You’re Ignoring Your Camera’s Most Powerful Dial
Published: Apr 15, 2026 · Duration: 10 min 13 sec · 186K views
*👉 Set your camera up once and never fight your settings again. Get my free Camera Setup Guide here There is one dial on your camera that can completely change how your camera behaves, yet most photographers either overlook it or underestimate how powerful it really is. If you find yourself constantly adjusting ISO or rebuilding your exposure every time the light changes, this video will show you a faster and more…
