Book Description
Digital photography has arrived once and for all. No longer do photographers have to be defensive because they prefer digital. Thanks to new technologies, digital cameras at all ends of the price spectrum can rival their film counterparts. If you have shifted from traditional to digital photography, and need to know what's different about shooting digital, this is the book for you. Now in its third edition, this bestseller has been fine-tuned and updated to provide you with the most current information on today's cameras that you'll find anywhere. Whether you're new to photography, or new to digital photography, you'll learn how to take the best possible shots. Even though your camera may pack an image sensor instead of film, taking good pictures still involves understanding apertures, shutter speeds, and metering techniques, as well as a few other issues that film shooters don't face. Fortunately, digital cameras also provide some unique tools to help you get the shot right the first time. Covering everything from the inner workings of your camera to the subtle intricacies of your image editing software, the book is divided into four sections. The first section provides a basic technical foundation that will prepare you for the rest of the book. It details the basics of how digital cameras work and gives you a quick photography primer. The second part explores everything you need to know to make an informed decision about which camera, computer, and software is right for you. In section three, you'll progress to the nitty gritty of shooting, including metering, choosing the right exposure, using histograms, flash photography, and much more. In the final section, you'll learn about digital editing and correction techniques, along with the various methods for outputting your images (print and electronic). If you're new to photography, you'll learn the basic theory that photographers have studied for decades, as well as the latest tools and techniques mad
Customer Reviews:
Excellent reference book.......2007-10-03
Good presentation of basic facts of digital photography. Especially valueable I found the chapters that explained how cameras and digital cameras in particular work and what should be taken into account when selecting your camera.
More advanced topics like editing images with your computer are also covered in an easy to follow fashion. Even though you might not do an awful lot of editing it's good to know where to find the guidance.
This book is most suitable for someone who is not very experienced in photography but reasonably technically oriented and wants to create better quality images taking the best out of his or her camera.
I'm told it's "just what [he] wanted".......2007-09-26
I got this for my friend's birthday. He is fast becoming a very skilled digital photographer and is ready to hone his technical capabilities. I selected this book entirely on others' recommendations. The feedback from my friend is very positive, and I expect to see his work in print any day now! :-)
I love this book!.......2007-05-13
I found this book extremely helpful, having just purchased a digital SLR. It is easy to read and very informative. I would recommend this book for someone that does not know a lot about digital SLR, but is familiar with a film SLR.
Very informative book........2007-04-01
This book answered all the questions my wife and I had about photography. It was easy to understand for a beginner and it goes into intermediate/advanced topics.
good for beginners.........2007-03-09
i took it for my photography class. I love it!! it's good for beginners, too..
Average customer rating:
- A first-rate primer for the aspiring filmmaker
- An Excellent Overview
- good intro for the novice filmmaker
- Stick to "Film Art" by Bordwell/Thomspon
- Best introduction to filmmaking I've found
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Art of Technique, The: An Aesthetic Approach to Film and Video Production
John S. Douglass , and
Glenn P. Harnden
Manufacturer: Allyn & Bacon
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ASIN: 0205142486 |
Book Description
This book provides readers with a teaching tool not currently available. It fills a gap in the literature by going beyond simple discussions of hardware usage, basic technical knowledge, and descriptions of technique to in-depth discussions of how this knowledge can be applied in a coherent approach to production.
Customer Reviews:
A first-rate primer for the aspiring filmmaker.......2002-01-21
"The Art of Technique: An Aesthetic Approach to Film and Video Production," is more of a primer than it is a critique of cinema. Yes, there is a big difference between this volume by John S. Douglass and Gleen P. Harnden and "Film Art: An Introduction" by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. The latter utilizes literally hundreds of frames from both classic and relatively unknown films to demonstrate cinematic techniques. "The Art of Technique" does the same thing with student models. Whether this has to do with the cost of using copyrighted images and/or transforming them into individual frames for use in a book, this is a major difference between the two textbooks. When Douglass and Harnden discuss something, like Ingmar Bergman's use of Extreme Close-ups (ECU) in "Scenes from a Marriage," they can only talk about the extraordinary intimacy it gave the production, without offering visual evidence to support their claim. However, the authors do use their "homemade" examples to good use at time; for example, when exploring the concept of framing they provide examples of "bad" shots (filled with distracting clutter) before showing better choices for the cinematographer.
"The Art of Technique" is divided into two main sections. After an introductory chapter on "Interpretation and Treatment," there are six chapters focusing on the various ways a film can tell a story, essentially pre-production considerations. There is a nice little section detailing the basic types of stories Hollywood tells over and over again ("Jack the Giant Killer," "Fish Out of Water," etc.). Clearly the emphasis here is more on production than criticism, which makes the orientation of this textbook more towards the filmmaker than the movie audience. This first section ends with a look at Mise en Scene and questions of design. In terms of concepts covered, separate from the issue of how those concepts are presented in the textbook, the authors provided a comprehensive, well-organized presentation.
The second half of the book covers "Techniques for Interpretation," which starts with a consideration of the trinity of how the camera, editing and lighting can be used for interpretation. Again, everything is here; I could not find a concept or technique that was an obviously glaring omission. The book concludes with a pair of chapters on Symbols and Significance, which get into the impact film can have on an audience. You might expect to find a glossary at the back of the book, but instead we have a pair of appendixes on Electricity and Measuring Light, which only serves to reaffirm that this book is geared towards the novice filmmaker. If you are looking for a textbook that because you are a budding film critic, then this is not going to be your first choice. I can even make the argument that by not saturating their textbook with frames from dozens of films, Douglass and Harden do their readers a favor, because instead of borrowing shots and techniques from the acknowledged masters of the art form, they are being asked to reinvent the wheel. Do not knock this, because that is basically how we think Orson Welles made "Citizen Kane."
An Excellent Overview.......2002-01-15
This book explores many aspects of filmmaking in a logical, easy-to-follow manner. A great find, albeit a bit pricy. I used it as my text for teaching a video class as it offers some aesthetic considerations for why techniques may or may not be used in a given situation. This approach helps to minimize the technique-euphoria beginners tend to have with techniques which are new to them (ala George Lucas in the new Star Wars...)
good intro for the novice filmmaker.......2000-04-21
this book works very well as an introduction to the creative use of techniques for filmmaking. it is quite clear and concise and is not bogged down by too much technical details or dicussions on film theory. a good starting point.
Stick to "Film Art" by Bordwell/Thomspon.......2000-04-17
I was shocked when I looked over this book. I had always relied on "Film Art" which is the standanrd intro to film but I wanted to branch out. I found this book to be a superficial approach to cinema, no probbing analysis or challenge to interpretaion of technique or narrative. Save your money and stick to the classics. No one seems to use this book in higher education film studies- ask your professor to suggest a book.
Best introduction to filmmaking I've found.......2000-02-16
I teach filmmaking, and needed a book that covers all the basics in a few meaty and meaningful pages. This is it. Most books on filmmaking technique either wax philosophical on the author's pet theories or get lost in gee-wiz-you-can-do-this-neat-trick-with-the-camera mania. There's little of either here; instead, you'll find a focused, highly readable series of lessons on what really matters most--how to communicate a meaningful message on film or video. Unlike some VERY annoying books that give examples of lighting and other techniques via badly drawn line-art, this book shows every technique with actual stills from video shoots so you can see how lighting, framing, lens use, etc. actually change the appearance and impact of a scene.
There are also numerous references to excellent classic and modern films with quite specific suggestions for examining the techniques that make those films work so well. Perhaps most important of all, the authors never lose sight of the fact that filmmaking is about interpreting and creating a reality that evokes a meaningful and powerful experience for the audience.
So if you want a book listing all the oh-so-tacky transitions and effects that your new NLE will do, or a thousand-page treatise on the history of film, THIS AIN'T IT. But if you want a book that will help you quickly learn to put cameras, lighting, and editing in the service of your creativity--buy this one first.
Book Description
Since 1930, when the museum accessioned its first photograph, a vast and unique archive of pictures has been assembled for study, preservation, and exhibition. Among the photographers whose work is reproduced and discussed here are Hill and Adamson, Cameron, OSullivan, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Cartier-Bresson, Lange, Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Robert Frank. Some of these photos are classics, familiar and well-loved favourites; many others are surprising, little-known works by the masters of the art, and a number are hitherto unpublished works by unknown photographers of the past.
Customer Reviews:
Learning to Look at Photographs.......2007-07-23
When John Szarkowski recently passed away at the age of 81, the world lost one of photography's most important figures. He was the "Stieglitz" of the 1960s and 70s, changing the way audiences look at photographic images and he shaped the way future audiences will come to appreciate the pioneering work of Arbus, Eggleston, Friedlander and Winogrand. When he took over the reins of curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from Edward Steichen, photography's early twentieth century grand master, Szarkowski promoted a "new" photography that incorporated the everyday moment as it was unfolding on the streets around cities and towns across America.
His great gift to all of us who love photography besides his championing of new talent, was his incredible skill at writing texts, essays, criticism, books on photography. With his talent as a writer, and his background as a photographer, he was able to open a window onto this two-dimensional world of form and tone, shape, texture and composition, explaining the ins and outs, the subtleties, and the intuitions of image makers, their techniques and their medium in all its finesse.
Having simply tried to take a good photograph all his life, he simply knew a good photograph when he saw one. It is what made him such a great curator. His own best known books of photographs, "The Idea of Louis Sullivan" published in 1956, contains photographs of the architecture of Chicago, and his other, "The Face of Minnesota" published in 1958, contains haunting landscape images of his home state. He wrote the way he carefully crafted his own images. He framed each paragraph paying close attention to his ear, to diction and all the elements of style. It is why I love to read him and why I think he was the greatest writer to take on this visual art form.
Two books of his about photography that in my opinion are indispensable are "The Photographer's Eye" first published in 1966, and "Looking at Photographs" first published in 1973. With these two collections, the reader will gain an historic appreciation of photography from its earliest innovators beginning in the 1830s to the period of high modernism in the 1970s. With Szarkowski as your guide, readers will appreciate how the medium advanced, yet they will also understand how it has remained fundamentally the same picture-making process when it comes to handling two-dimensional space.
In The Photographer's Eye, Szarkowski covers what a viewer needs to take in from a photograph, how it was framed, cropped, what the subject is, what the detail is, the focus and the vantage point. In each of these wide areas, he supplies important photographs from the Museum of Modern Art's vast collection that illustrate these points. He begins with "The Thing Itself" the "what" of photography, the landscape or still life, or portrait that the photographer has aimed his camera at. From there he moves on to how photographers fix on detail, the synechdocal "parts" that make up the "whole" and that produce visual metaphor: the close up of the hands, the side of a face, a rifle, a window, a headlight of a car, a door latch.
He then illustrates how photographers carefully frame their images, how they crop, how they envision the image from its interior picture plane to what is left out, alluded to, outside the frame. And finally, he shows how photographers measure time; freeze moments, single out the present for the past of some distant future. Added to this element of time is vantage, that trick of where to place the picture plane in terms of its perspective, foreground to background, its recession to a vanishing point or points, whether it is head-on and flat, or deep and endless, looming up or slanting down, the world from above, or the world from below.
In Looking at Photographs which is subtitled--"100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art," Szarkowski leads the reader across time, from the earliest best works of the 19th century masters: Timothy O'Sullivan, Fredrick Evans, Lewis Hine, and Jacob Riis, all the way to Robert Frank, Roy DeCarava, Paul Caponigro, and Joel Meyerowitz.
The book is printed so that there is a one-page essay facing each of the 100 photographs it describes. Within that compact structure, Szarkowski is able to move from one idea to another across the history of photography as the reader turns the pages, and he is able to pinpoint for the reader, the attributes that each photographer brings to his medium. In this way the reader learns to read images for their wealth of craft, form and subject matter. It is like having the curator take you on a personal guided tour of the museum's photography galleries.
I learned from reading this book that Timothy O'Sullivan's "white skies" were a result of the wet plate's over-sensitivity to blue light and that "sky areas were thus automatically overexposed, and rendered as blank white." I also learned that O'Sullivan "...accepted the white sky and used it as a shape, enclosed in tension between the picture's visual horizon and the edges of the plate." Knowing this, I can never look at O'Sullivan's work again without understanding how much this 19th century photographic pioneer wanted the figure-ground relationship of sky to land to feature in his compositions. And this is only one example from the book. There are 99 more.
Owning this book is like having your own private collection of the world's most famous photographs. The way you look at photographs will be enriched. On your next visit to a gallery or a museum, you will be able to see so much more thanks to the intelligent and thoughtful writing of John Szarkowski. His precise, clear and uncluttered prose style will make your reading experience a pleasure in itself.
A Collection, New Yorker style.......2002-01-30
A Collection, New Yorker style
It is difficult to make a collection of photographs by different people and not make it haphazard, unless there is an underlying theme. The book consists of 100 pictures by 100 photographers in bw, taken in the 100 years or so up to 1960's, accompanied by a page of text each. The writing is insightful and while is not meant to be a systematic introduction to the history of photography, nonetheless is quite educational if you are interested in the subject. While the photographs range from the concrete to the abstract, the book is coherent helped largely by text. I enjoyed reading the text and looking at the photographs.
The book's strength and its weakness is that it strives to be stylish and original; the writing is 'sophisticated' and snobbish, a la New Yorker. Some of the 'deep' comments I did not much care for. Perhaps more importantly, a majority of the photos chosen for the photographer are not the ones that are usually considered the photographers' most representative works.
You should not read the book to study the history of photography nor to find the standard representative works of the famous photographers. I think people who are familiar with the rough history of photography and the more famous photographers will enjoy looking through the book - perhaps checked out from a library.
Wonderful Images; Beautifully Written Commentary.......2001-11-18
John Szarkowski has selected 100 worthwhile images and has crafted exceptionally well written commentary about each image. The value of the collection far exceeds the sum of the parts. The book is an education about photography. It doesn't matter how much you like an image or agree with the commentary because by seeing the image and reading the commentary you will learn about photography and about life.
See More . . . Through Photographs.......2000-11-19
Although this book has much less female nudity than many photographic books, there are two such pages in the book. If this type of representation is offensive to you, either skip this book or avoid those pages.
This book has modest purposes. "This is a picture book, and its first purpose is to provide the material for simple delectation." Beyond that, it is "a visual interim report [as of 1973] on the results of collecting photographs at The Museum of Modern Art." These purposes are magnificently fulfilled, and your eyes and mind will be filled with many useful new perspectives and thoughts as a result of your delectations here. Your life will be expanded by seeing much more, both in photographs and in life, as a result.
Mr. Szarkowski, head of the photography collection at MOMA, points at that photography "has received little serious study." As a result, a language and analytical framework for considering photography are not yet developed. To overcome that limitation. Mr. Szarkowski has provided a number of perspectives in the one-page essays that accompany each page of photography. These perspectives include the utilitarian purpose of the image, the style of the photographer, the technology of the methods used, and the significance of the subjects or subject. He also draws your attention to detail or information that expand your knowledge. It is like having the best docent's photography tour of your life, as you go through the images.
These essays are modestly described as simply "an attempt to describe photography from a somewhat more liberal and exploratory perspective." Well, they are much more than that. They are like turning the light on to see the photographs for the first time, unless you are a talented photographer already.
In creating this book, a great decision was made to limit each photographer to one page of work. In this way, you get to see more types of images and styles. I think this added greatly to the knowledge and enjoyment that can be gained from this wonderful book. A great benefit of this approach was to allow selecting photographs that would reproduce well in this page size format. I heartily approve of that approach!
In the book you will find portraits, sketches for painters, ways of recording far away places, Civil War reporting, aerial reconnaisance, methods of encouraging connections, insights into the physics of life, and efforts to be a successor to painting. As the author says, "Photography has remained . . . radical, instructive, disruptive, influential, problematic, and [an] astonishing phenomenon of the modern epoch."
Here are my favorite images:
D.O. Hill and W.B. Johnston, David Octavius Hill, Celotype, c. 1845
Baron Isadore Taylor, Nadar, Woodbury type, 1872
Madonna with Children, Julia Margaret Cameron, Albumen print, c. 1866
Sugar Bowl with Rowboat, Wisconsin Dells, Henry Hamilton Bennett, 1911
Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris, Jacques Henri Lartigue
Georgia Engelhard, Alfred Stieglitz, 1921
Torso of Neil, Edward Weston, 1925
Babe Ruth, Nikolas Muray, c. 1927
James Joyce, Berenice Abbott, 1928
Wes Fesler Kicking a Football, Dr. Harold E. Edgerton, c. 1935
A Boy with a Straw Hat with Flag Waiting to March in a Pro-War Parade, New York City, Diane Arbus, 1967
The Museum of Modern Art added a photograph to its collection as only the 23rd object acquired in April 1930. From the beginning, the museum has been committed to photography and was the first museum to establish its own independent department of photography. Invariably, there are copious hangings from the collection available for viewing whenever you visit MOMA. The museum should be proud of creating and now reproducing an improved version of this wonderful set of selections from its extensive collection. Perhaps it is time to create a larger version of this book that is more representative of the whole collection.
After you finish expanding your vision through these marvelous essays and photographs, I urge you to do some photography of your own to express yourself. You will appreciate what you see even more when you create your own images. A good way to begin is to find a subject that is covered in this book and create your own version of that subject. In that way, you can get "inside of the camera" with the photographer. After your photographs can be seen, compare them with the book. Go back and try again. Repeat the process . . . until you have captured the image you were seeking. Like truth, images can be fleeting and transparent.
See more and be more through your improved vision!
The book I was REALLY hoping for !.......2000-04-09
This book fills the reader with emotion and knowledge about photography and photographs. I will never look at a photograph the same way after having read it. The language is beautiful and inspiring and photographs wonderfully reproduced. Anyone who loves the subject or art in general will find excitement on every page. NOW I can begin to know which photographers to study first and how to approach an enormous subject.
Book Description
This personal, wide-ranging, and contemplative volume--and the last book Barthes published--finds the author applying his influential perceptiveness and associative insight to the subject of photography. To this end, several black-and-white photos (by the likes of Avedon, Clifford, Hine, Mapplethorpe, Nadar, Van Der Zee, and so forth) are reprinted throughout the text.
Customer Reviews:
shocked.......2007-07-16
I am somewhat stunned and dismayed by the negative reviews of this book. In fact, it has seem to elicit a sense of vitriol in some.
It is a brilliant book. How does one state simply such a complicated phenomenon. One doesn't. Those who rated this book so poorly biggest gripe was the complexity of the writing. Well - it is a complex topic. But, I think Barthes beautifully and deftly counters this complexity with his personal reflections. The book is both a critical assessment of photography and an emotional one as well, and this is what makes it so wonderful.
It is not wholly unexpected that most all the negative reviews of this book come late in the day - in the ever increasing time of sound-bites, instant pleasures and generally non-reflective immersion.
Totally disappointing.......2007-05-14
Sorry to say, although Roland Barthes is an icon to some. This short book is self-indulgent, unintelligible, and therefore useless. The author is far more interested in himself than he is interested in the subject.
You'll literally need a Ph.D. to understand this book.......2007-04-20
If you're thinking of reading this hoping for some insight on the creative process of the photographer, don't look to this ponderous, jargon-laden critique of "The Photograph". Barthes readily admits he's not a photographer and his viewpoint is only from side of the observer and the object. Barthes does offer a couple of intriguing ideas: the concepts of "studium" and "punctum," but since he seems to concentrate almost exclusively on photographs of human subjects (portraits and photojournalism), much of those ideas aren't as developed as they should be. Instead, he tries to explain why certain photographs evoke an emotional response (the punctum) in him. Of course, I may have misunderstood his point completely but not for want of trying. His esoteric use of existentialist terms makes it a tough read for those without a substantial education in philosophy. In any case, much of his critique has been overturned and made obsolete by the advent of digital photography (he explains early on that he doesn't have the patience to be a photography because he wants an instant result; there's nothing more instant than a digital photo) and digital photo manipulation (e.g. Photoshop).
For the people..........2007-04-06
After reading these last few negative reviews i had to write in about this, one of the most amazing books i have ever read. It is true that this book could be thought of as for the well read and serious academics only, but really, it is a book for anyone wishing to challenge the true nature of photography and its effect on the individual and society as a whole. No, it is not for those who simply wish to sit and idly consume 'pictures;' if this is you then do not bother even picking up this book.
This book attempts to help us navigate the way we consume images, to make it easier to understand just what it is that draws us to them so much, and which for me it did beautifully. Barthes doesn't try to give all the answers, but rather approaches his explanation in a very poetic (not long winded as another reviewer said!)and personal language which gives an intimacy that is very rare in academic texts.
If you truly want to open your eyes to the wider implications of photography then this book is a must (along with Susan Sontag's On Photography)
Difficult to Read.......2007-02-16
The style of writing is a bit long-winded and too self-indulgent for my tastes; it was sometimes a struggle to understand what point the author was trying to make (if any).
Here are a couple of excerpts from the book:
"I was overcome by an 'ontological' desire: I wanted to learn at all costs what Photography was 'in itself,' by what essential feature it was to be distinguished from the community of images. Such a desire really meant that beyond the evidence provided by technology and usage, and despite its tremendous contemporary expansion, I wasn't sure that Photography existed, that it had a 'genius' of its own."
"In the Photograph, the event is never transcended for the sake of something else: the Photograph always leads the corpus I need back to the body I see; it is the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency, matte and somehow stupid, the This (this photograph, and not Photography), in short what Lacan calls the Tuche, the Occassion, the Encounter, the Real, in its indefatigable expression."
For me, it was not a pleasant reading experience.
Book Description
The Technique of Film & Video Editing provides a detailed, precise look at the artistic and aesthetic principles and practices of editing for both picture and sound. Analyses of photographs from dozens of classic and contemporary films and videos provide a sound basis for the professional filmmaker and student editor. This book puts into context the storytelling choices an editor will have to make against a background of theory, history, and practice. This new edition has been updated to include the latest advances in digital video and nonlinear editing and explores the new trend of documentary as mainstream entertainment, using films such as "Farenheit 9/11" and "The Fog of War" as examples.
* Learn how to strengthen your story and engage your audience through the editing process
* Examples, analysis, and film stills from great movies
* Includes a new chapter on the impact of documentaries
Customer Reviews:
Not Great.......2007-09-02
I had to buy this for a film editing class. I'm only about 2 chapters in so far, but I'm thoroughly disappointed. Dancyger seems to prefer directing techniques over editing techniques, and definitely theory over practice. The first two chapters are reiterating the basics of film history with many techniques used in the classics by Melies, Porter, and Eisenstein. I've learned so much about film history and SO LITTLE about editing technique I am definitely disappointed and unenthusiastic about reading more.
Average customer rating:
- From Hydroquinone to Photo
|
The Theory of the Photographic Process
James
Manufacturer: Macmillan Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Customer Reviews:
From Hydroquinone to Photo.......2001-11-29
If you need more accurate and deep information about the chemical process of photography this is THE book to you.
Book Description
The Perfect Companion for Your Digital Camera
Digital cameras are more than just cameras with electronic chips inside--they've revolutionized how we take pictures and what we do with them. If you're new to digital photography, Digital Photography Essentials offers everything you need to get up to speed fast. You'll find essential information about your camera and equipment, techniques for editing and enhancing your pictures, expert advice on sharing your images with others, and a wealth of digital photography tips, tricks, and project ideas.
A Complete Solution
The companion CD includes all the software you need, including a full version of Adobe PhotoDeluxe 4.1 for Windows (a $49 U.S. value) and a fully functional tryout of Adobe Photoshop Elements for both Windows and Mac. In the book, you'll find step-by-step instructions that show how to repair, enhance, and just have fun with your images. There's nothing more to buy.
Packed with information, software, and the insights of best-selling author Erica Sadun, Digital Photography Essentials is the perfect guide for digital photographers. Topics covered include:
* Composing shots, lighting scenes, and posing subjects
* Managing your digital camera's batteries, memory cards, and more
* Enhancing your images and fixing picture flaws
* Discovering imaginative and creative uses for digital photos
* Sharing photos via e-mail and the World Wide Web
* Making DVDs, picture CDs, and video CD slide shows
Customer Reviews:
Anyone can edit photos with this book.......2003-01-18
Overview.
This book is definitely a book for beginners in the world of digital photography, and is for those with a low-end, point and click type of camera. Not everyone wants, or needs, a top-end expensive complicated camera.
Features.
This soft cover book has 249 pages printed on high quality paper, with clear images and a CDROM containing Adobe PhotoDeluxe 4.1, a full program with no limitations which can be registered.
PhotoDeluxe will enable image enhancement and manipulation and is a very good way to get the most from your snaps. It is a very simplified, but not a simple program, and is a major reason for getting the book.
Along with this program come a variety of time-limited demos that you can use to see if they will make your photography experience better.
Book Description.
Digital Photography Essentials is a book which is aimed at the new user to a new way of photography. It contains a colour section covering all the black and white images scattered throughout the book.
Chapter 1 is taken up with descriptions of how to go about taking the best shots getting the light right, and positioning either yourself or your subject.
Chapter 2 delves into which camera you should get, and more importantly, why. It also explains how and why things work, such as batteries and how to care for them, memory management etc.
Chapter 3 is the section on using the free Adobe PhotoDeluxe program supplied with the book, which you will use for all the exercises in the rest of the book.
The program gives great image enhancement and manipulation abilities to the photographer, so if the image is not quite how you wanted it to look, you can change everything about it.
This program is not complicated, but has many features of high-end photo retouching programs without having to learn industrial strength features that you may never use.
You learn to do things like swapping faces or backgrounds, and, more importantly, how to use layers. This feature allows images to be altered without destroying the original image if your selection does not suit.
Chapter 4 once again delves into the world of photo correction techniques. This is not as daunting as it may sound as PhotoDeluxe can fix things automatically. This leaves you free to dabble with settings once you know what each feature does. Sometimes automatic settings are not quite what you had in mind.
Here you start using filters to add impact, or remove unwanted parts from an image. Learn to remove red-eye, which is often a feature of images taken with a flash.
Chapter 5 teaches you to create panoramas, 3D images, and enlarge your images.
From this point on the book introduces the demo and time-limited plugins and filters, which can be experimented with.
Panoramas are used often, but what is not stressed is that panorama photos need to overlap by at least 25%, or more. This gives a much better chance of lining up features when joining the images. Use a tripod for getting good panorama shots. Tripods can be cheap but they do keep your photos level.
Chapter 6 is all about printing, printers and paper, and presenting your images for someone else to print them for you.
The resolution of an image is important when printing, or sending to the web. Both use opposite ends of the spectrum for their purposes, and you need to know which to use, luckily this is not complicated.
Chapter 7 is about presenting your images on CD and DVD, and on interactive photo albums and slide shows. A lot of this chapter is about different commercial programs for the burning and display of your images.
Chapter 8 is about sharing images over the web, and introduces the ideas of screen size etc, but resolution is also important as monitors only show at 72 dpi.
Chapter 9 introduces a lot of different ideas for using your new digital camera remember photos cost nothing, so there is plenty of scope here.
It is possible to use your digital camera to make a slide show presentation, document your belongings, or the contents of a box, or an accident. You can even photograph documents instead of using a scanner.
Chapter 10 is dedicated to craft ideas that you can create with your camera. The list here is really extensive.
Chapter 11 teaches how to transform images and create new and exciting things that you hadn't considered, check magazines and see how ads are manipulated for inspiration.
Using PhotoDeluxe you can make slide shows and share them with friends. You can even make a colouring book from your photos using the filters in the program, make calendars, or animate images.
Chapter 12 is spent introducing you to third-party programs so you can see what is available.
Bottom Line.
Not a book for an advanced photographer, as it is aimed at the beginner, which it does admirably, like a text book.
The inclusion of Adobe PhotoDeluxe is a compelling reason for purchase, but the book opens up many exciting possibilities that you may not discover by yourself.
The lessons are simple to follow, you don't have to learn new skills. Non computer-literate people can cope with the fun things that they will find to do. This book is like a text book on the use of PhotoDeluxe.
Learn to correct faults in photographs and create something new. All you have to do, as the author stresses, is to take as many photos as you can. It will cost no more and you have more choices to play with later.
Too much emphasis on commercial programs has reduced the rating, but the book is good, and the bundled software is great to start with. You may find you never need to get another program anyway.
© Tim Skyrme, 2003...
Use your digital camera in ways you never thought about.......2002-11-21
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY ESSENTIALS
AUTHOR: Erica Sadun
PUBLISHER: Sybex
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades
BOOK REVIEW: The CD was the first thing I looked at. It contains 18 programs! WOW! Most are trials but some are shareware and the biggest plus is that PhotoDeluxe from Adobe is FREE! Yes sir! The whole program on the CD - no cost whatsoever and the programs are as follows: PhotoDeluxe, Photo Elements, Funhouse, Flip Album, Thumbs Up, CompUpick Pro, DVD PictureShow, GIF Animator, Genuine Fractuals PrintPro,HotText, Still Motion Creator, PhotoPrinter, PhotoImpact, PhotoVista Link, PaintShop Pro, Orasee Link, Nero Burning ROM, and JPEG Compress.
For the ability to try before you buy any of these programs, except, of course, PhotoDeluxe, this makes the book worth its price. Yet, by using these programs and using the tips and ideas from the book, you can create pictures that are worth a thousand words.
The best place to start is at the beginning and that is exactly what Ms. Sadun has done. Chapter one talks about the best way to get a good picture such as lighting and backgrounds. If you don't know which camera to buy in the first place, the next chapter will give you some good advice. Also, think your camera is only for picture taking? WRONG again. Ever go into the mall only to come out and you can't remember where you parked? Had you had your digital camera alone, you could have taken a picture of the locator markings and all you would need to do is look at the "review pictures" on the camera. Of course we all know the camera can be used for insurance purposes of accidents and the damage done but what about witnesses or even what was said if your camera has a sound-recording feature?
What else is your camera good for? Need stickers or how about a jigsaw puzzle to keep a child busy? Remember "Shrinky Dinks"? This can be used to make charms for a bracelet from photos you have taken. What grandmother wouldn't want one of a monthly recording of their newest grandchild? This list can be endless - just use your imagination.
Now that you have PhotoDeluxe installed on your computer, do you know how to use it? If not, check out Chapter 3 and 4. When a particular photo effect is discussed, there are pictures of before and after of how they should look. Don't forget to get motion into your photos with the Gif Animator.
Have I touched on the whole book? Not even close but you can by getting your own copy of Digital Photography Essentials today and see what I didn't tell you about.
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Joel Sternfeld: Sweet Earth
Manufacturer: Steidl
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 3865211240
Release Date: 2006-04-01 |
Book Description
As laissez-faire market forces sweep the globe and the earth's future seems endangered, the dream of living in concert with nature and with one another is increasingly essential. A common human longing throughout history, the utopian community ideal has taken root firmly in America over the past 200 years. In Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, Joel Sternfeld looks at 60 representative historic or present American utopias. Neither a conventional history nor a conventional book of photography, Sweet Earth brings together what might otherwise seem disparate, individualized social phenomena and makes visible the community of communities. This tradition of thinking has ancient, universal precedents. When Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, he gave a name to an idea that had included the Epic of Gilgamesh, Plato's Republic and the Old Testament's and he started an argument. Francis Bacon (who believed in utopia through science) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (utopia through nature) soon joined the debate, but it was the harsh changes in daily life engendered by the factory systems of the early Industrial Revolution that brought an urgency to the discussion, as seen in the writings of David Owens, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. While the early social theorists were largely European, it was in the fluid environment of young America that true utopian communities were built and utopian experimentation flourished. In the years between 1810 and 1850, hundreds of secular and religious societies bravely tried to build a "perfect" life for their members. In the 20th century, experimentation began again, reaching a fever pitch in the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. Some of the late-1960s communes still survive and continue to flourish. The 1990s and the early years of the new millennium have become yet another hotbed of social experimentation. The co-housing movement is sweeping America with at least 70 communities fully completed and occupied and numerous others planned. At the same time, the rapid global expansion of sustainable communities known as ecovillages has been widely adopted in America. This book by one of America's foremost artists includes a photograph of each community and is accompanied by brief text that summarizes the most salient aspects of the history or organization. A book that functions both as art, as well as a hopeful guide to alternative ways of life.
Customer Reviews:
nice new book.......2007-01-07
This a great photography book. The prints are very nice.
If you like Joel Sternfeld, you will love this book.
Book Description
Sometimes seeing is more difficult for the student of art than believing. Taylor, in a book that has sold more than 300,000 copies since its original publication in 1957, has helped two generations of art students "learn to look."
This handy guide to the visual arts is designed to provide a comprehensive view of art, moving from the analytic study of specific works to a consideration of broad principles and technical matters. Forty-four carefully selected illustrations afford an excellent sampling of the wide range of experience awaiting the explorer.
The second edition of Learning to Look includes a new chapter on twentieth-century art. Taylor's thoughtful discussion of pure forms and our responses to them gives the reader a few useful starting points for looking at art that does not reproduce nature and for understanding the distance between contemporary figurative art and reality.
Customer Reviews:
Regularly chosen by instructor.......2006-09-07
I have used this textbook a number of times in teaching Art Appreciation classes. The choice of chapter topics works fairly well with beginning students: one chapter discusses the structure, composition and style of two specific paintings in contrast with one another; another chapter makes a study of the work of one artist. There is even a chapter devoted to modern art (a tough sell with some first-time students). I only fault the highly specific and somewhat tedious chapter discussing all aspects of color. I tend to skip over this one and leave it for the independent reading of anyone interested. Otherwise good, and I will use it again until something comes along with a better overview. Mostly black and white illustrations -- only two in color.
A worthy course........2005-06-18
Interesting, accesible and ultimately enlightening but inclined also to be dry in an "Idiot's guide" kind of way, this renders the topic a little lack lustre which for me detracts from the point of veiwing art and getting any kind of personal, emotional experience from it. Excellent for making art accesible nonetheless and demystifying the nonsense that art glitterarty types surround the topic in so needlessly and prentiontiously.
Book Description
If you want to understand the key debates in photography and learn how to apply the fascinating issues raised by critical theory to your own practical work, this is the book for you! This accessible book cuts through often difficult and intimidating academic language to deliver understandable, stimulating discussion and summaries of the original texts.
Key works by great writers such as Sontag and Barthes are explored, along with those from other prominent critics. You are guided through a broad range of issues, including the differences between Eastern and Western art, post-modernism, sexism, the relationship between photography and language and many other crucial debates. The book is illustrated by many classic images by eminent international photographers.
Each chapter is followed by stimulating assignments and activities to get you thinking critically and apply theoretical knowledge to your own practical work. A helpful glossary provides quick access to all key terms and a substantial index references key words within the original essays which are not normally indexed.
A must-have aid to anyone studying critical theory, this book provides intelligently written, illuminating insights on the 21st century's dominant art form.
* Benefit from detailed summaries and stimulating discussion that cuts through the complexity of key critical theory texts
* Gives you confidence to tackle photographic theory and relate it to your own work, enhancing your creativity and understanding
* Explore fascinating issues including sexism, the effects of advertising, Eastern versus Western art and moral issues raised by photography
Customer Reviews:
recommended to all those interested in photographic theory.........2005-10-15
Had this book been available during my degree in photography, I would have found it invaluable as an introduction not only to key texts to read alongside the originals, but also as an introduction to a wider range of approaches and writers of photographic criticism. After my degree even, it has been an enlightening book to read.
Ashley la Grange makes photographic theory accessible to those intimidated or unfamiliar with the sometimes overly complicated language used, and guides the reader through points that can be difficult to grasp without losing complexities of the original work.
Having worked with A-level students of photography since my graduation, I have found this an ideal book to not only introduce pupils to main ideas and terminology used in theory, but also to encourage personal responses through thought provoking questions included at the end of each chapter.
This book is different to other introductory books on photographic criticism in that its aims are not only to offer an overview of main debates and texts, but to help the reader gain a greater understanding of what they contain.
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- Dragon of the Red Dawn (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
- Driving the Pacific Coast Oregon and Washington, 6th (Driving the Pacific Coast Oregon and Washington)
- Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
- Edward Weston's California Landscapes
- Exploring Black and White Photography
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