In this post I want to review the book Digital Nature Photography: The Art and the Scienceby John and Barbara Gerlach.

This book, written by professional nature photographers, is a no nonsense book about how to photograph nature in the digital age. It contains twelve chapters, covering all important topics on nature photography, including the following:

• Choosing a camera
• How to use lenses
• Exposure
• Image composition
• Using Flash

and more.
The book has almost 190 pages and contains many wonderful pictures who alone are worth the price of the book as they can be a great inspiration. Most of the pictures were taken in North America, but there are also shots from other places of the world, like Africa.

This book is not a book about using Photoshop to improve your pictures. And thats a very good thing. There are already many books out there doing this. Instead, this book focuses on the photography part, on how to use your equipment most effectively to get the shots right not on the computer but when you are out in the field.

I won’t cover all that’s in the book in this review, but pick just a few things that I especially liked.

One of the best tips in the book is to became a better naturalist. Many beginning nature photographers make the mistake to think all they need is a good camera and an expensive lens. But equally important is to know your subject, be it a bird, a dragonfly or anything else. The more you know about the biology of your subject, the better your results will be. Many books don’t mention this, so I was very glad to find it in this one.

In the chapter about getting sharp images, the authors stress the importance of a good tripod. I’ve seen photographers carrying heavy lenses like a 2.8/300 (or heavier) and then mount it on a really cheap and bad tripod. John and Barbara Gerlach convince the reader that tripods are important and also explain how to choose a good one.

My favorite chapters are those on using light and on composition. Again this is not found in many other books or only treated shortly there. The image examples in those chapters are a wonderful selection of great shots that really show the various ways to use light and to compose your pictures.

A very practical chapter is the one which covers how to carry your gear in the field. The tips there are very useful, even if not all can be used by all people (like using mules and horses to carry large equipment).

I’ve read many books on nature photography and this one is definitely among my top five. I highly recommend it.

You can get if from amazon here: