Creative Close-Ups: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques

Creative Close-Ups: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

Harold Davis is becoming one of my favorite authors.  His work is consistent, his writing is clear and engaging, and his photos are visually interesting.  As I’ve written previously (here and here), Harold Davis is an award-winning photographer and a prolific author of more than 30 books.  In Creative Close-Ups: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques, his flair for writing is again clearly evident.

Book Chapters

“Worlds of wonder” (pages 10-43) – The first chapter introduces you to some fundamental terms, discusses finding close-up subjects, elaborates on magnification concepts, and explains the true meaning of the term macro.

“Getting close” (pages 44-87) – This chapter covers both close-up photography equipment and techniques, such as focusing, exposure, aperture, depth-of-field, and more.

“Photographing flowers” (pages 88-147) – Harold Davis’ joy of photographing flowers shines through in this chapter.  Though he concentrates on flowers, the principles demonstrated hold true for close-up photography in general.  This chapter examines HDR, focus stacking, selective focus, impressionism, abstraction, and more.

“Universe in a grain of sand” (pages 148-187) – Like the previous chapter, this one uses a specific subject matter—here it’s water drops—to illustrate general close-up photography techniques.  It also covers topics such as mirror lockup, reflections, refractions, and more.

“Close-ups in the studio” (pages 188-233) – As the title says, this chapter deals with studio close-ups, still life subjects in particular.  Harold attacks the subject from all angles: setting the stage, lighting, backgrounds, building your own studio, and more.

Example Pages

If you’d like to see some sample pages from this book, the following are available online:

• Introduction (PDF)
• Flowers and Light (pages 98-99) (PDF)

Book Pros

• great introductory book on close-up photography
• good coverage on all aspects of close-up photography
• replete with the author’s own lovely photos
• easy to read reading style
• explores each concept thoroughly before introducing another
• covers artistic aspects of topics as well as technical side
• includes Harold’s own thought process for his photos
• nice size book for reading
• not a Photoshop step-by-step how-to book

Creative Close-Ups offers up a good mix of art and science; in fact, you might say Harold is part artist, part photographer, with a smidgen of scientist thrown in for good measure.  For example, on page 155, he interjects an interesting sidebar about how water drops differ depending upon their source (raindrops look different from dew drops, which in turn look different from water drops produced by sprayers or garden hoses).  This technical aspect provides a nice touch to the book.

Book Cons

While I found no technical flaws with Harold Davis’ writing, there was unfortunately a set of mistakes that should have been caught by the book’s editor.  Most of the page number references on pages 128-152, 164, 176, and 190 referred to the wrong pages.  It appears that either text was added or deleted before final publishing, and these numbers were not reflowed.  Some examples are

• page 128, step 8.  “…results shown to the right on page 131”  (should be page 129)
• page 131.  “…(page 132 top) and the other of the petals (page 132 bottom)”  (both should be page 130)
• page 152.  “(See page 126 for more information about flower clamps.)”  (should be page 134)

I want to emphasize that this appears to be an editorial lapse as Harold Davis’ writing itself seems flawless, which is typical of him.  I also don’t want to give the impression that these errors somehow devalue the book, as they do not.  They’re actually not that noticeable because it’s fairly obvious from the context what the correct page should be.  Still, they mar what is otherwise an excellent book.

My last point in this section is really not a “con” per se, more of a suggestion for the next version.  It would be helpful if the chapter “Getting close,” which refers to photographic gear (e.g., bellow, reversal rings, individual lens, Lensbaby, etc.) would display images of the gear.  Newcomers may not know what an extension tube, a close-up filter, or a Lensbaby looks like.

Summary

I’ve already mentioned that I like Harold Davis’ writing style and that this book doesn’t disappoint.  He has an ability to convey concepts in a straightforward manner without being wordy, and his photos are real eye candy.  So how do I rate the book, and would I suggest adding it to your library?

On a rating scale of one to five, I’d have to rate the overall quality of the book a 4+.  Though the contents of the book is decidedly a five, it misses the mark of five due to the problem I covered in the “Book Cons” section.

Would I suggest purchasing this book?  As always, it depends.  If you’re starting out in close-up photography or would just like to learn more about close-up photography in general, then I highly recommend this book.  If, on the other hand, you’ve an advanced photographer with experience in close-up work, it obviously will have less value to you.

Finally, in keeping in the spirit of full disclosure, I would like to state that I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.  This in no way influences my opinion of the book.  If I find problems with either a book’s content or its manufacturing, I’ll tell you.