Are you one of those photographers looking for ideas or just one who needs some inspiration?  If so, then I have help for you: Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis. Written in his typical thorough and meticulous way, this latest book of Harold’s is a merger between two of his loves, photography and flowers. And the wonderful thing about flower photography for you is that it can be done almost anywhere—inside your home, in your backyard, at a botanical garden, or just along some random hillside.  There’s no shortage of opportunities, if you just look, and you’ll get all of the inspiration you need from reading this book.  If fact, when I was scrutinizing his photos—you know, eyeball to page—many times I found myself saying, “Wow! I’d love to take a shot like that!”

Book Sections

The Worlds of Flower Photography – Harold uses this first section to give you a Cliffs Notes version of flower anatomy.  I know some may want to skip this section and get right down to the nitty-gritty of shooting, but understanding and appreciating the model before clicking the shutter usually makes for better images. I know, I know, I didn’t care for biology in school either, but Harold keeps it simple and interesting.

Making Flower Photos – For those who want to talk about photography gear and concepts, this is your section.  Most all of the information presented is understandable even to a beginner.  Pros may be able to skim this section, but Harold obviously feels it is important to discuss how basic concepts work with flower photography.

The Bee’s Eye View – How many times have you truly looked at a flower?  I mean really close-up.  If you’re like me, then probably not that often.  This section provides you with a close-up tour of the flower’s more interesting visual aspects.

Flowers in the Digital Darkroom – This was the most fascinating section for me.  You see, it turns out that Harold not only loves photography and flowers, but he loves Photoshop too.  Here he shows you how to get the most out of floral images and even how to take these images into visual realms not commonly associated with flower photography  (for example, how to make your flower image look like a van Gogh painting).  He also covers topics such as focus stacking, enhancing colors with LAB, flowers in black and white, and photographing on white for transparency, to name a few.

My Opinion

I read Photographing Flowers right before visiting my daughter and her husband in Los Angeles earlier this year.  Considering how few floral opportunities there are during the winter months in Central New York, I was ready for whatever Southern California could dish out.  Harold’s book had sufficiently inspired me, and Los Angeles didn’t let me down.  A few of the images I captured are below.  Please realize that these are just snapshots I took with my trusty “point-and-shoot” Rebel T3 (what a great camera to travel with!) and are in no way representative of the beautiful images found within Harold’s book.  Mine are literally snapshots with little to no time spent on lighting, equipment, or composition.  Harold is a much better photographer of flowers than I, and his photos are consequently far more impressive.  Many of his images are macro shots where your eyeball is right in the flower. Nevertheless, I was happy with the shots I got and pleased that Harold’s book gave me some additional motivation to grab them.

If you’ve read any of my other reviews of Harold Davis’ books (here, here, here, or here), then you already know that I have a high regard for his abilities. This book is no different and would make a great addition to anyone’s how-to photography library regardless of experience level. When it comes to macro flower photography books, this one has no competition.

Book Details

Full Disclosure: I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.  This never influences my opinion or review of a book.

Here’s the latest list of links I’ve collected over the last few weeks.  The Sensor Size Matters articles are particularly good.  Enjoy!

Seven Things I Wish I’d Have Known When I First Became a Photographer

 

Iceland: 12 Tips for Capturing Great Waterfall Images

 

Mastering Mobile HDR Photography

 

A 10 Step Guide to Understanding and Utilising Pattern

 

Still Life Photography: Depth of Field Mastered in 8 Steps

 

Using Coloured Filters in Black and White Photography

 

Your Ten Step Guide to Catching Action Shots

 

Using High Speed Sync Flash for Great Flower Photos

 

An In-Depth Look at Dusk and Twilight Photography

 

Stabilization and Bokeh

 

The Best Way to Learn About Composition

 

Lens Stabilization vs. In-Camera Stabilization

 

Photo Preservation Guide Part 1: In the Darkroom

 

Photo Preservation Guide Part 2: Handling, Exhibiting, and Storing

 

Photo Preservation Guide Part 3: Handling Disasters and Professional Help

 

15 Top Zoo Photography Tips

 

Millenniata Invents 1000 Year DVD

 

Nine Reasons When Manual Focus Is Better Than Auto Focus

 

How to Use a Grey Card

 

A Beginner’s Guide to Shooting in Low Light

 

Great Photography Tutorials & Tips

 

How China Changed the American Lighting Industry

 

What to Charge for Professional Photography, Working out Prices

 

50 Amazing Examples of Reflective Photography

 

5-Million Dot Electronic Viewfinder Makes Glass Obsolete

 

Sensor Size Matters - Part 1

 

Sensor Size Matters – Part 2

 

Are you an advanced photographer interested in an in-depth discussion about perfect exposure? If that’s you, then this is your book. Michael Freeman’s Perfect Exposure is targeted towards advanced amateurs and professionals, definitely not at beginners. It’s not that beginners couldn’t benefit from it, but the book assumes the reader already has a level of understanding beyond what most beginners possess.  Michael approaches the topic in a very analytical way, which to some may not be as easy to follow as his Photographer’s Eye, Photographer’s Mind, or Photographer’s Vision series.

Book Sections

Chapter 1: Fast-Track and Foolproof – Freeman forewarns the reader that his methods make for “unavoidable wordiness,” and because of this, the first chapter contains a short summary of his exposure decision flowchart.  The chart may appear a little daunting at first, but it makes sense if you can just stick with him.  His decision flow logic contains the following steps:

1. Settings – Make sure all the relevant camera settings are as you require them.
2. Metering Mode – Set your preferred metering mode and know exactly how it will perform under the lighting conditions.
3. Know What You Want – Imagine in advance how you want the brightness distribution of the image to be.
4. Scan for Problems – Quickly assess what the issues and likely problems will be, particularly the scene’s dynamic range relative to the sensor’s capability and if the light levels are low.
5. Key Tones – Identify the areas of the scene that are the most important for brightness and in order of importance.
6. Risk of Clipping – If the scene’s dynamic range exceeds the sensor’s performance, decide whether to make changes, or to settle for a compromise exposure and/or rely on special post-processing.
7. Meter & Expose – Use the appropriate metering mode, adjusting up or down if necessary.
8. Review – Review the result on the screen. If it needs improving, re-shoot if appropriate.

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?  And it should be, but as Michael delves deeper into each point in later chapters, you gain a real understanding why professional photography depends more on the photographer than on the equipment.  Not to say that it becomes complicated—it doesn’t—it’s just that there’s much more to consider with each point than what’s implied by the above list.

Chapter 2: Technical – This chapter covers the workings of the digital sensor, dynamic range of the sensor and scene, and how to measure light and exposure.

“From this point of view—my point of view—exposure is less about twiddling knobs and pressing buttons than about managing light and knowing what you want from an image.”

Chapter 3: The Twelve – In this section, which he refers to as his key chapter, Michael describes 12 distinct and separate types of exposure situations.  The variations are a result of classifying images by the scene’s dynamic range versus the image’s important key tones.  For example, one of the 12 scenarios occurs when we have dark key tones (e.g., a black cat) in a scene with a dynamic range that fits comfortably into the sensor’s dynamic range.  I’ve never seen this type of classification scheme before, and it makes for an interesting way to approach exposure.  Good stuff.

Chapter 4: Style – The prior two chapters deal with finding the exposure that best fits the situation.  This chapter covers taking this knowledge and tempering it with judgment and creativity.

Chapter 5: Post-Processing – Though Michael states that he’d rather not have to talk about post-processing by getting the exposure right at the start, he acknowledges that it’s impossible to separate digital photography completely from digital processing, at least when shooting RAW. The goal is to start with a well-exposed image file and use processing to step final image quality up.  The following subtopics are covered:

• choosing exposure later
• exposure, brightness, and lightness
• selective exposure
• post exposure control
• HDR imaging
• exposure blending
• blending by hand

My Opinion

As I already stated at the beginning of this article and the book’s subtitle points out, this is a guide targeted towards professionals and advanced amateurs.  So if you’re a beginner looking for a book on exposure, you’d be better served by getting either Ross Hoddinott’s Digital Exposure Handbook or Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure. Both provide excellent coverage of exposure in a writing style that’s easy to read and understand.  Michael Freeman’s book, on other hand, is more advanced, analytical, and some might even say, formulaic in its presentation. I believe advanced amateurs would benefit more than seasoned pros, who no doubt already do most of what it advocates, yet pros may gain a fuller understanding of their intuitive process.

A quote from the book which I feel embodies its essence is

“I cannot recommend too strongly the simple ability to look at a scene, see blocks of roughly similar brightness, know intuitively what that brightness is, and how that translates into stops. With practice, it’s easy, and maybe you do this already. If not, time to start!”

Let Michael Freeman guide you through what it takes to make the perfect exposure every time.

Book Details

Full Disclosure: I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.  This never influences my opinion or review of a book.

Check out the specs on this massive film camera:

“It’s a 35-foot camera that produces original film negatives six feet tall. And the resolution of that negative is about a thousand times greater than anything else available on the planet at this time.”

The downside of a six-foot tall image is the price, $50,000.

There’s a myriad of good photography books available explaining the finer points of lighting, and I’ve reviewed a few of them here, here, here, and here.  So do we really need another lighting book?  The answer to that depends on what you’re looking for in the way of teaching and how you learn best.  If, like me, you learn best by first studying the fundamental theory behind things before attempting to apply it, then the book Light: Science and Magic is an excellent place to start. If, on the other hand, you learn best by examples, with just an introduction to the underlying concepts, then you really didn’t have a lot of choices until now.  Now you have Kevin Kubota’s book Lighting Notebook: 101 Lighting Styles and Setups for Digital Photographers fills in that gap.

Book Sections

Chapters 1-6 comprise approximately one fourth of the book and provide you with the basic knowledge you’ll need to get the most out of the examples.  The Notebook section, the remainder of the book, consists of 101 two-page lighting scenarios or “recipes.”

Here are the section titles, with brief description:

Chapter 1  A Brief History of the World (of Lighting) — photographic lighting trends from the 1930s to 2000s.

Chapter 2  The Lingo of Lighting — all of the basic lighting styles, such as single-point, 2-point, 3-point, Rembrandt, butterfly, and others; also. some common lighting terminology.

Chapter 3  Essential Lighting Skills — essential rules regarding metering, quality, quantity, ratios, and color of light.

Chapter 4  An Overview of Essential Lighting Tools — overall basics of flash, continuous lighting equipment, diffusing tools, trigger tools, and more.

Chapter 5  Build Your Lighting Kit — details given for a DIY kit, a basic purchased kit, a “I can light almost anything” kit, and a studio kit.

Chapter 6  Post-Processing: Making Your Images Really Sing — the ever necessary post-processing chapter using Aperture, Lightroom, or Photoshop.

The Notebook — this section represents the majority of the book.  It contains 101 different lighting scenarios presented across two pages.  Each one provides a description of the setup, multiple photos of the shoot with usually one photo showing the photographer’s location, a lighting diagram, exposure information, and list of tools used.  In addition to all of this, every lighting “recipe” provides general equipment cost (indicated by one to four dollar signs), the number of recommended assistants, and type of lighting used (natural, artificial, or mixed).

Pros

This book has a lot of positives going for it.  Here are some of the things I liked:

• a concise introduction to lighting theory
• 101 examples of how to apply that theory
• a detailed index to lighting “recipes” for almost any situation
• the photographer’s position shown in diagram and photo
• a great variety of lighting scenarios provided
• consistent layout across all examples
• a very easy read, sprinkled with Kevin’s style of humor

Cons

The book’s only negative I can see is its heavy reliance on Kevin’s Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom actions.  You can purchase his toolkit, but I’d rather have seen the post-processing done without their use.  It tends to make the book look too much like a commercial for his products.  Books, in my opinion, should be fairly self-contained when it comes to teaching concepts, and this one misses that mark.  It’s still a good book, and no doubt you’ll get some great ideas, but just go into it with this understanding.

Conclusions

If you’re looking for a lighting idea book brimming with examples and how-to information, then this may be the book for you.  It’s fun mixed with education, and that’s always a great combination.

If you like to learn by example, I can’t think of a better book on artificial lighting than this one.  Just be aware that there’s a potential shortcoming of learning by example.  The examples will invariably be in the photographer’s style, and the examples in this book are no different.  Kevin Kubota has a unique, some may say trendy, lighting style, not that that’s bad.  It just may not be the style that fits you.  His approach is balanced somewhat by having other photographers contribute their lighting recipes; however, their lighting styles do not differ significantly from Kevin’s.  It’s probably best to consider this book more of an idea and inspiration book than a general lighting book.

Check out the excerpt or preview below for more information and see if this book might interest you.

Preview

Click here to see an excerpt from the book or view the following video to hear Kevin tell why he decided to write Lighting Notebook.

Book Details

Full Disclosure: I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.  This never influences my opinion or review of a book.