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Digital Nature and Landscape Photography
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by Mark Lucock
Sales Rank: 409199
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List Price: $19.95
$14.96
At Amazon
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Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Photographers' Institute Press March 4, 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1861085141
ISBN-13: 978-1861085146
Product Dimensions:
9.6 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
Product Description
Landscape photography is one of the last bastions of traditional film, but this is slowly changing, as more and more leading photographers adopt digital technology. This beautifully produced and illustrated reference outlines simple techniques for assuring that your nature images achieve both technical and creative excellence. Covering everything from using a digital camera in the field to image-editing methods in the digital darkroom, it elaborates on the best methods for working with tripods and flashes outside, the implications of using different exposure meters in certain lighting conditions, and a whole host of tips dedicated to gaining a proper understanding of the craft. With breathtaking images featured throughout, this resource is sure to inspire every amateur photographer eager to go digital outdoors.
Customer Reviews & Comments
As I read this book, I was reminded of a movie where one of the characters, a television personality, was killed because of low-ratings. I kept thinking that this book deserved a poor review because of typography alone. The main text print is quite small, perhaps six or seven points, but worse, it is printed with grey ink on white paper, and still worse it uses a type without serifs. (Serifs are those little pointy things on the ends of letters; most experts agree that they contribute to readability in extended printed text.) Each page of this book was an effort to read. The content of the book itself is a broad overview of digital nature photography in all of its aspects. After a brief history of digital photography, Lucock describes digital workflow and briefly discusses selection of a digital camera. He then discusses digital scanning, and fundamental topics like file formats and digital storage. He devotes a chapter to post-processing, telling the reader what a number of processes in image processing do. He then returns to a discussion of general principles of photography like exposure and composition. The author next discusses what he calls field craft, including such subjects as the use of tripods and flash in the field, as well as an unduly lengthy discussion of film medium- and large-format cameras that seems out of place in a digital photography book. He finishes up with a brief discussion of professionalizing one's photography. The author speaks in generalities, without practical demonstration. If you want a broad overview of digital nature photography so that you can decide whether you wish to pursue it, this book will do, but if you are looking for specific techniques, look elsewhere. For example, he discusses curves, a procedure used to adjust digital pictures, and tells you that dragging the curve will make a picture darker or lighter. While that is true, it really doesn't begin to show the usefulness of curves in controlling tonality in a picture. Occasionally some of the statements are just wrong. For example, after discussing levels and curves, he states that Photoshop CS3 combines levels and curves into a single tool. That isn't so. If one expects to be more than just a snap shooter, the field of digital nature photography requires far more information than is contained in this book. People interested in this area would benefit by reading a book like "Digital Nature Photography: The Art and the Science" by John and Barbara Gerlach to learn about photographing nature and "Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book (Tim Grey Guides)" by Ellen Anon and Tim Grey for post processing. Read this book only if you want the broadest view of digital nature photography and have very sharp eyes.
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Digital Nature and Landscape Photography
List Price: $19.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $14.96
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