Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography, Revised Edition

This is a superb book on creative photography along with an introduction to digital techniques. The book covers a wealth of topics on photographic vision that are accompanied with magnificent photographs illustrating each topic. Thus, the reader's understanding of light, color, composition, and many other topics is enhanced by both clearly written text as well as the accompanying images. This is not meant to be a book focused on digital photography techniques (for that purpose I recommend Digital Landscape Photography by John and Barbara Gerlach), but it does include an introductory discussion of topics such as histograms, HDR photography, and some uses of Photoshop at appropriate points. This book is a joy to read and should be on every photographer's bookshelf.

This is a well produced book that would do any library proud. However, my brand new book stuck in several places near the spine & though the pages did come apart without tearing, there is an unsightly grey fuzz running vertically down several pages near the spine. But that has nothing to do with Ms. Tharpe. Picked it up on Ken Rockwell's suggestion & am glad I did. Concepts are clearly explained & the accompanying photographs are very appropriate & helpful. The questions she suggests a photographer ask of himself & composition is very helpful, coming back to photography after a long hiatus. The style of writing is interesting & not at all pedantic, though there is a lot of information in these 10 chapters. The chapter on Light is comprehensive as it not only talks about its colour, direction & how the camera sees it with very helpful boxes like: How to read a historgram?; HDR, and White Balance. All chapters have this great mix of general comprehensive presentation along with tips. Chapter 8, Artistic Interpretations have different Techniques & there is a small segment on Lensbabies. I would have loved to have read this when I was sixteen & starting out learining the craft. But better late than never. All in all, an excellent & beautiful book that I would reccomend & readily gift to friends & family interested in the Art.

The original edition of "Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography" is a great guide for beginners to learn to take better photographs. Despite its age, much of the content is still relevant to today's photographers. The updated edition of this book contains fresh images, and new material specifically about digital photography. While the selection of images and core of the text both continue to be very enjoyable, the new technical information presented is underwhelming and relatively poorly described. I think this book would have been a lot stronger if it maintained its focus on compositional/creative topics rather than occasionally diverge into technical subjects. Those looking for technical information would be better advised to look elsewhere. In terms of creative instruction, this book is similar to Peterson's "Learning to See Creatively". These two books do overlap, although in many ways, they are complementary. Tharp covers 'core' topics like lighting, design elements, and composition quite well (and this is what made the book so successful in the first edition). If you've never been exposed to these ideas, this book is a great introduction. The material is engaging and easy-to-read, and does not feel like a textbook (which many books on composition tend to feel like). However, if you are already familiar with these topics, the presentation may feel a bit shallow. On a few occasions, a topic will be described and stop just short of giving really practical advice or examples on how it might be used. It was disappointing to sometimes read a fairly vague passage and then have it qualified with something generic like "just keep trying and you'll get it" (sic). Nevertheless, this is still among one of the better introductory instructional books on composition. Of the few sidebars (or otherwise minor sections) on technical topics, none were covered very well. Tharp discusses the histogram, and 'exposing to the right', as well as topics like HDR and some post-processing ideas, all of which had fairly weak coverage. The weakest topic by far was on depth of field, where the book tries to describe hyperfocal focusing, and basically butchers the topic. The text describes the DoF master application, but not the excellent website, where all of this is explained wonderfully. Despite it's flaws, the real 'meat' of this book continues to be relatively good. This book is best for beginning photographers. If you more advanced, and are looking for some deeper discussion of 'vision' and expression through photography (something that Tharp hints at in a few places), then I'd highly recommend you take a look at David duChemin's excellent books instead.

I had been away from serious photography for many years. About 1 year ago I had taken up painting, and needed some reference photos to use with the painting. I was so pleased with the photo results, that I've rediscovered photography. I've read several books, but the 2 that I'm most pleased with are Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography and Bryan Peterson's Understanding Photography Field Guide. Both are excellent and I'd recommend them to anyone who wants to understand what their camera is capable of doing. But most important, how to see a quality photo even before it is shot. When I read it is with a highlighter in hand. There is hardly a page in either book that I haven't marked or written a note to myself inspired by what I had just read. The bonus of these books is the photographic examples the authors use. If you bought Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography, just for the remarkable photos it would be worth the price. Maybe you know someone with an budding interest in photgraphy, consider these books as a gift to them. They'll become much better and faster photographers than learning on their own.

Un libro che introduce il lettore, non tanto a stratagemmi tecnici, quanto ad un corretto uso di determinati dettagli della scena ed alla composizione per la foto di paesaggi naturalistici. Consiglio la lettura a quanti desiderano cogliere il lato artistico di tale tipologia di foto senza lasciarsi distrarre da aspetti tecnici che, oggi come oggi, possono venire padroneggiati da qualunque smanettone.

Je l'ai pris pour offrir. le livre est très jolie. J'espère qu'elle plaira à la personne à laquelle je vais l'offrir. Correspond tout à fait à la photo. Le livre a été livré dans un très bon état.

Well laid out and a good read for the beginning photographer.

This book was recommended to me as one of the better books to buy on photography and technique. You can sit and read this though in relatively short-order, but think the best way to get the most out of it is to go through a chapter at a time, and go out and try out some of the teachings from each. I found it a good way to prompt me into thinking differently about how i went about taking outdoor shots. I liked the narrative style; it is easy going, and quite light-hearted in places, but does a very good job of explaining techniques and methods. The photos inside were an excellent way to endorse the techniques being discussed, and showcase Brenda's talents as a creative photographer. This is an updated version of her original book, and shows how Brenda has progressed from the use of film to digital, but the basic fundamentals remain the same. If you only buy one book on the subject, then i think you would struggle to find one that does a better job.

The book is fine, but follows a fairly traditional approach to compostions. Had hoped for some new insights. Still useful.