A while ago, I published a review about the book Digital Nature Photography: The Art and the Science by John and Barbara Gerlach. I really liked their book and found that it was one of the best books on digital nature photography available.
Recently I bought and read John and Barbara’s new book, called Digital Landscape Photography, which is simply fantastic.
The book has about 200 pages and is full of great information for the digital landscape photographer.
The book covers many topics, including:

• Cameras, lenses and accessories
• Exposure
• Getting sharp images
• Light and composition
• HDR and panoramas

Everything is explained in great detail. The book contains a lot more text than many other books on landscape photography. Especially interesting was the chapter on getting sharp images. I often wonder when I meet photographers in the field with expensive cameras and lenses but not using a tripod or other techniques to get sharp images. This book tells you how to get the sharpest image possible and the author’s advice works!

The chapters on light and composition are equally interesting. Although I’ve read many books on those subjects already, I always learn something new in a good book. This is because every photographer works different and also composes his or here photographs in a different way.

The text is easy to follow and never gets boring. I finished the book in 3 days.

The images in the book are simply fantastic and a great inspiration. I always judge photography books by the quality of their images. How could you believe the text if the images are bad? In this book, every shot is stunning and perfectly executed. The authors really know how to take great landscape photographs.

There is nothing in the book I don’t like. It would have been interesting to know the technical details of the images (focal length, f-stop), but where really necessary, the authors mention those details.

I highly recommend this book to everyone nature and landscape photographer!

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Birds are among the most popular subjects among nature photographers. But taking good pictures is not easy, one reason among many is that birds are often hard to approach.
Because of this, some people think that creativity is only for landscape or flow close-up photography but for birds it’s enough to get a sharp, correctly exposed and frame filling picture of a species.
But good pictures of birds can be as creative as landscape or close-up photographs. They can be art as well.
Bill Coster, a famous bird photographer from the UK, has recently published a great new book called “Create Bird Photography”. This is not another book that explains in detail what lens you need, how f-stops work or that a DSLR is better than a compact camera. True, there is a small chapter on technical requirements like cameras, telephoto lenses or tripod heads but all the rest of the book is devoted on how to make amazing bird pictures that are more than just sharp and correctly exposed.
The book covers the various aspects of bird photography and the daily life of birds and how to create good pictures in those situations. Topics covered are birds in flight, the life cycle of birds, action, behaviour, food and drink or taking shots during dusk and dawn.
In each chapter, the author shows many stunning pictures from birds around the world and explains the story behind the shot: Where is was taken, what equipment was used, which decisions the photographer made while taking the picture, why he used a certain technique, shutter speed, composition, etc.
For some pictures the author also explains what could be better. This is a great help, especially for beginning photographers.

For me, the pictures alone are a great inspiration but with the text next to the pictures the book becomes even more valuable and you can get many ideas for you own shots, whether you are on safari in Africa or photographing song birds in your backyard.

For me, this was one of the best books on bird photography I’ve read.

Highly recommended for bird photographers of all levels!

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There are many books on the market that offer a collection of tips for the digital photographer. Not all of them are worth reading. The book reviewed here is different and I think is one of the better tip collections on the market.

This is not a book for the complete beginner. You should at least know some basic terms like aperture, ISO or shutter speed.

The book is divided into 9 chapters.

Chapter one covers the basics. Some of the advice here may seam trivial like to shoot RAW or to just shoot when you see something interesting – instead of waiting and missing the shot. But it’s worth reading through the tips as the author has good arguments in most tips.

Chapter two covers exposure, something many photographers have problems with. The author covers important topics here like dynamic range and how to find out what the dynamic range of your camera is or how to judge the dynamic range of your subject. I also liked the tips on histograms and how to shoot for the highlights.

Chapter three covers color with topics like how to make white balance simple, color contrast, hot to shoot for black-and-white and more.

Chapter four is about technical details. Here, Michael Freeman explains how to best check for dust on your sensor, how to clean it or how to check if a picture is sharp. He also explains proper hand holding techniques. Many beginning and intermediate photographers may think they already know how to handhold a camera but I definitely learned something new here. Wrong hand holding technique probably leads to more out of focus pictures than anything else. Other tips are how to weather proof your camera or how to handle your camera in cold weather.

Chapter five covers composition. Composition is complex and easily a topic for a whole book alone. So in this chapter it is not possible to completely cover photographic position. But the author manages to explain many important points like how to look for rhythm or how to apply verticals or curves.

Chapter six is a rather specific chapter and it covers stitching. The author explains what possibilities are there for stitching and how to photograph a scene to get the most out of the stitching process. If you plan to do a lot of stitching, you will find great advice here. If you haven’t considered stitching an option so far, this chapter may give you some interesting new ideas.

Chapter seven explains how to use multiple shoots to get the best out of one picture, for example by blending exposures or using HDR technique to increase the dynamic range or to get rid of noise.

Chapter eight covers photography in low light and how to best deal with and avoid noise.

The last chapter covers some basic digital processing techniques. Of course this is not a complete Photoshop or Lightroom manual but has some great ideas in it.

Conclusion:
I like the book and I although I already know many of the topics covered in the book, I nonetheless learned a lot and also got some new ideas for topics I thought I had already understood completely.
The images throughout the book are great for explaining the theory in the text and are always beautiful to look at. But Michael Freeman is not only a very skilled photographer but also a great writer. The text is always interesting to read and easy to follow.
I highly recommend this book to beginning and intermediate photographers and I think even professionals can find something interesting in the book.

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(The book has different coves in Europe and the US but it is the same book)

The best book on sharpening will soon be published in a new edition covering all the latest aditions to Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom. Lightroom coverage is very important for me as I use this program as much as possible before moving to Photoshop.

According to the publisher’s website for the book the publication date is August, 14th. I hope to get a copy soon after that and then I will publish a review on this website.

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This book is a little different from other books about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom that I am currently reading (and soon be reviewing here).
First of all, it’s not only about Lightroom 2 but about the whole DSLR workflow from shooting to managing and developing the photos with Lightroom and then fine tuning them with Photoshop.

Of course a single book can not cover everything in complete detail. As the author explains in the introduction, he does not cover the Lightroom moduls Slideshow, Printing and Web. He only covers the Library and Develop Modules.
And of course he doesn’t explain everything Photoshop is capable of. But this is probably impossible to do in a single book.

The book is divided into four parts:

1. Part one covers the digital SLR camera and choosing your computer hardware. The author explains the advantages of a DSLR, how to use memory cards, which image format (RAW or JPEG) and how to calibrate a monitor.

2. Part two covers the configuration of Lightroom 2 and how to import and organize your images.

3. Part three covers the Develop module of Lightroom 2. The Develop module is the most difficult for most newcomers to digital photography and Lightroom. I found the explanations in this book very easy to follow. Sometimes I wished they were more detailed.

4. The last part is all about Photoshop. It’s not a beginners introduction to Photoshop. The author explains some interesting techniques like creating Panoramas, how to make HDR images, using Adjustment Layers, and creating some interesting effects with Photoshop. Black and White images are also covered. As with the Lightroom part, I found the explanations easy to follow, but sometimes I wished they were more detailed.

Conclusion:
As I already said, this is not a complete introduction to Lightroom and Photoshop. This wasn’t the intention of the Author when he wrote the book.
If you really want to master Lightroom and Photoshop, you will need other books, too. For Lightroom 2 I highly recommed The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book by Martin Evening, which I reviewed here.

I like the workflow presented in the book and I think it’s a good basis to build your own workflow on if you haven’t already established one or are looking for new ideas how to do it.

I think the books succeeds in explaining how a digital workflow could look like. I recommend this book for beginning and intermediate photographers who wand to build a workflow around Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and Adobe Photoshop. It’s also a good book for people coming from film to digital photography. If you are already an advanced digital photographer with an established workflow or if you want a complete book about Lightroom and Photoshop, this book is probably not for you.

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Scott Kelby’s new book, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers is now available at amazon.com.
I really liked Scott’s book about Lightroom 1 and I am sure the new book will also be a great resource for everyone using Lightroom 2.
As soon as I get the book and finish reading it, I will write a detailed review here on my website.

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Photoshop expert Tim Grey has recently published his new book Take Your Best Shot: Tim Grey Tackles Your Digital Darkroom Questions.
The book is a little more than 200 pages of questions and answers about digital photography with an emphasis on digital darkroom techniques.

The book contains 10 chapters. Below is a basic outline of the book with some examples of the topics each chapter covers. This is not a detailed list of everything you will find in the book.

1. Digital Fundamentals
Here, Tim talks about topics like resolutions, dynamic range, RAW format or how a sensor works.
It’s a nice introduction with answers to questions many beginning photographers have.

2. Digital Cameras and Tools
In this chapter the author covers the advantages of a DSLR over a Point&Shoot camera, sensor dust, how many megapixels you need or how to take care of your camera.

3. Digital Capture
Topics in this chapter are JPEG vs RAW, how to expose for the highlights, color spaces and more. Tiim also covers some trends in digital photography that may play a major role in the future like light-field cameras.

4. Digital Darkroom
This chapter covers the basics of digital darkroom techniques including storage and backup, what you need for your digital darkroom and so on. He also address the question of Mac vs. Windows. Of course, he does not take one side and trashes the other. Tim recognizes that both systems have their advantages and disadvantages and you won’t feel the need to change your computer system after reading this chapter.
I liked that the author recommends external hard drives as the best solution for image backups. With the current prices, they are really the best solution.

5. Color Management
Color Management is a complicated topic for the beginner and even for many past this stage. This chapter covers the basics of color management including how to calibrate your monitor and how color management in Photoshop works. I found the explanations in this chapter very good and if you are new to this topic, many things will be easier to understand after reading it.

6. Optimizing in Photoshop
Here Tim writes about working with RAW files and when he uses Adobe Camera RAW and when he switches to Photoshop. He describes his personal workflow and yours may differ. Tim’s approach is to do only some stuff in Adobe Camera RAW (or Lightroom) and most in Photoshop. I prefer to do much more in Lightroom and use Photoshop only when it offers better tools than Lightroom. The author never tells you that his way is the only way to do it but merely describes his workflow and why he does it that way, but he never tries to convince the reader that this is the only way of doing things.
Other topics in this chapter cover the Curves tool in Photoshop or how to work with colors in your image.

7. Creative Effects
This chapter covers some interesting creative effects like Photoshop Filters, adding vignettes or how to create Black-and-White images.

8. Image Problem Solving
Not every shot is perfect in camera. Many need some corrections after the photo shoot on the computer. That’s the topic of this chapter. The author explains how to fix sky that is too pale, changing the white balance in JPEG images, how to apply noise reduction and more.

9. Printing
Here, Tim covers buying a good printer, how to fix some common printing problems and how to prepare an image for upload to a printing service.

10. Digital Sharing
The last chapter covers how to share your images on the web, how to create web galleries or slide shows or what to look for when buying a digital projector.

My final rating:
Overall I found the book very interesting and a good read. The writing style is easy and never boring. The author really knows his topics and also knows how to explain difficult subjects like color management to the reader.
I would have liked to see a little more coverage of RAW processing. A little more about Layers would also have been good, as this is a very confusing topic for Photoshop beginners.

Keep in mind that this is not a complete Photoshop book. This was not the intention of the author. You will still need an introduction to Photoshop beside this book.

If you are already an experienced digital photographer and Photoshop user, you won’t get much out of this book and I don’t recommend buying it.
If you are a beginner or an intermediate user and still have many unanswered questions in your head, then Tim’s book might be a good addition to your library.

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Also see my other photography book reviews.

Adobe Lightroom quickly became a favorite fool among photographers. It’s easy to use interface, it’s features for the management of large amount of photographs and it’s powerful possibilities to work with Raw files from all important cameras (including all DSLRs from Nikon and Canon) dramatically improved the productive of many photographers.

A few weeks ago, Adobe Lightroom 2 was released and several books covering the new version have already been published or will be published soon.

The first one is The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers by Martin Evening. And it’s probably all you ever need to fully master Lightroom 2.

The book has about 600 pages full of information about Lightroom 2.

The author explains all the main modules of Lightroom 2 (Library, Develop, Printing, Slideshow and Web). The chapters are very detailed and explain everything you need to know. Many tips and notes on the sidebars contain keyboard shortcuts and other useful information.

After an introduction into Lightroom 2 and a chapter on how to import your pictures, the author explains in great detail how to use the Library module and how you can organize your photos. Martin gives many tips on how to best manage your images and also explains how he does it. But he never tells you that there is only one way and recognizes that every photographer will use it’s own system.

My favorite chapter is the one on the Develop module. In many books about Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw) you can either find explanations what all the controls do or how to apply them but rarely do you learn why you use a tool in a certain way. In this book, the author not only explains in detail what a tool does and how to use it but also why you would use the tool in a certain way (for example, the book contains the best explanation on how to set the Blacks in an Raw image that I’ve ever found in a book). All important parts of the Develop module are explained with step by step examples in which the author explains how and why he is applying the tools in the Develop module to improve an image.

A separate chapter covers black and white images and another how to apply sharpening and noise reduction. Again, I found the explanations in those chapters better than in most other books I’ve read.

Although Lightroom 2 is very powerful and you probably won’t need Photoshop as much as when you used to work with Lightroom 1, there are many situations when using Photoshop is still necessary. In a chapter of it’s own, Martin covers all you need to know about how to use Lightroom 2 and Photoshop together. It helps that the author is not only an expert in Lightroom but also in Photoshop.

The chapters on printing and presenting your work are equally good as the other chapters already mentioned.

Two appendixes cover the Lightroom 2 preferences and settings.

Beside all this, Martin also covers a lot of advanced topics like shooting tethered, using GPS or working with audio notes (if your camera supports it).

For those who also use Bridge regularly, the author also explains in detail how to use Bridge and Lightroom 2 together and how those two programs work together.

What’s not to like? The only thing that one could complain about is the fact that some screenshots of the Lightroom 2 dialog boxes or menus are not completely sharp. But this is the case only for a few screenshots and really no problem. Maybe this is just a printing problem in my specific specimen of the book.

This is one of the best technical books I’ve read in a long time (and I’ve read a lot!). The writing is easy to follow and always detailed. I read the book during one weekend and I learned a lot about Lightroom, even after I’ve been using version 1 for quite a while now.

If you want only one book on Lightroom 2 and want to understand what your are doing instead of just doing it, this is your book. This is the bible for every advanced user of Adobe Lightroom 2.

Highly recommended!

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I am constantly looking for new books that help me improve my photography. For me an inspirational book should either have great images or an interesting text. Concepts of Nature by famous British wildlife photographer Andy Rouse has both.

Although Andy sometimes mentions specific technical settings (like the AF mode used), this is not a purely technical book that only tells you what lens you should by or that a full frame camera has better high ISO performance than a non full frame camera. For those interesting in the equipment used for all the shots, Andy lists details like camera, lens, ISO, f-stop, shutter speed, etc at the end of the book.

As title of the book says, the book is about art. Good photography is art and so are Andy’s shot. But just describing them as good does not do the pictures justice. They are beyond good and I can’t remember any other book in what I’ve seen so many amazing wildlife shots.
Andy’s shots of gorillas, big cats like leopards and lions and his many great bird shots are simply stunning. The book contains the best shot of a Golden Eagle I’ve ever seen seen in a book. Andy’s shots of albatrosses are amazing, especially the one of the displaying Wandering Albatrosses on South Georgia.
Often Andy does not just show the animal, but also it’s habitat. In the case of the just mentioned shot of the Wandering Albatross, you can see dark clouds and a mountain in the background. The weather looks very harsh and perfectly shows in what tough conditions the albatrosses live.

Beside the stunning pictures, I really like the text that Andy has written. He is a very skilled writer and a great story teller.
The text describes his evolution as a wildlife photographer, how his style changed and what he prefers when designing a wildlife shot. He writes a lot about the importance of good light, especially what he calls “Red5″. These are the 5 minutes of really warm and red light after dawn and right before dusk.

In his images, Andy often breaks the rules of composition that are so often told in beginners books. Those rules are important, but great photographers know when to break them.

Beside the light he calls Red5, Andy also writes about shooting at home, how he likes to capture the relationship between predators and prey or how he likes to give his pictures a certain atmosphere that makes them special.

For many shots, Andy tells how he made them. He describes how he spend countless hours in a hide for several days to wait for a Golden Eagle or how he risked his life to get an unusual shot of a lion.

Andy cares more about being out in the wild and spending time with animals than about technical details of cameras or lenses. Sure, he uses good equipment, but unlike other photographers who think that having an awesome camera is more important than knowing your subject, Andy understands that his equipment is just a necessary tool to get his shot.

I myself am interested in good equipment and I am glad that I own the equipment I’ve always wanted. But when I am out and pressing the shutter button 10 meters away from a European Hare in Austria or 5 meters from an Arctic Tern in northern Germany, it doesn’t matter which camera I have. It’s the excitement of being close to an wild animal and capturing the moment.

Andy also cares deeply about the conservation of our ever more endangered wildlife and often encourages the reader to think about it.

Concepts of Nature has been the most inspirational book for me in a long time. The images are so good that I will take this book out of the shelf much more often than most other books I own.
This book makes me want to try even harder to constantly improve my skills and I think this is the best thing one can say about a photography book.

If you are interested in wildlife photography, then this book is a must read!

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Layers are one of the most important features of Photoshop. In fact, without layers Photoshop would be pretty useless for many image editing tasks.
The problem for Photoshop beginners is, that layers can be pretty intimidating at first. There are many different ways to work with layers and the possibilites of what you can do with them are practically endless.
In many Photoshop books, layers are either explained without enough detail or in a too complicated way that leaves the reader wondering what this stuff is all about.

Recently I finished reading Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature by Photoshop Guru Matt Kloskowski (author of great websites like Lightroom Killer Tips or Photoshop Killer Tips).
The book has about 250 pages and is writtin in a tutorial style. Matt describes many useful aspects of layers in a stey by step style with many examples. To get the most out of this, you should try the examples for yourself (the sample files are available for download) in front of your computer and Photoshop.
The book does not cover absolutely everything there is about layers (that would require much more than 250 pages) but it probably covers more than 95% you as a photographer are ever going to need.

The writing style of Matt is very readable and often also very funny. The book never gets boring (and this is something I rarely say about a technical book). The examples are easy to follow and after working through them, you should have a solid understanding of the power of layers. I certainly learned a lot by reading this book and found it the best explanation of layers I’ve come across so far.

Highly recommened!

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