The AVA Guide to Outdoor Photography (The Ava Guides S.) [Paperback]

Cathy Joseph (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2005 | Series: The Ava Guides S.

A little knowledge and some basic tools are all any aspiring photographer needs to explore the creative possibilities of the natural world. The adventure starts with this advice for choosing the right equipment--whether the photographer will be shooting conventional or digital--along with film, filters and lenses, tripods, and other accessories. Amateur shutterbugs will learn how to plan and execute a productive outdoor photo shoot, including special creative techniques for photographing wildlife, landscapes, portraits, and even underwater. Even the most complex technical subjects are made clear through hundreds of intriguing photographs and diagrams which highlight the text, accompanied by photographer's notes which explain both the techniques and creative direction behind each.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cathy Joseph is an experienced photography writer. Previous titles include Photographing Weddings, Location Portraits and Photographing Buildings for RotoVision. Cathy is mother of two children with a special interest in family photography. She lives and works in London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: AVA Publishing (March 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2884790454
• ISBN-13: 978-2884790451
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,743,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Graphics are Not Enough, July 17, 2005

By 

Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The AVA Guide to Outdoor Photography (The Ava Guides S.) (Paperback)

One question I presume authors and editors ask when preparing an instructional manual for beginning photographers is how much information to present. One doesn't want to bog the beginning photographer down with so much technical detail that he or she just gives up on the effort. At the same time there are some critical tasks in photography that require a good insight into what technical things are happening in the camera if the beginning photographer is to take something more than snapshots. This question came into my mind while reading this book.

The editors of this and a whole series of photography books by AVA seem to have given serious consideration to graphic design and have created a handsome looking book. The illustrative pictures are quite attractive. The format presents brief instructional text under a subject heading like "Adding Light" and then a few one- or two-word pointers like "ringflash", "reflector" and "bounced light". The editors are so committed to this format that the book starts with a section entitled "How to get the most out of this book". I congratulate AVA on trying this approach, but I'm not sure it's effective.

For example, for the serious beginner it's important to understand the relationship between the amount of light in the scene and the camera's aperture and shutter speed and the film or digital media's sensitivity. The information is in the book, but in just a few very brief paragraphs. I felt that this section could have been expanded significantly.

On the other hand, more than half of the book is devoted to a section called "What to shoot". Here are subdivisions like buildings and gardens, children, and landscapes. Undoubtedly, it's important to provide the beginner with a broad overview of the opportunities for photographs and there are a lot of useful tips in each section, but some of the sections seem overdone. There are six pages devoted to underwater photography. This is a branch of photography that is so specialized that no one should think of undertaking it based on six pages of a beginners manual. At the same time devoting so much space to underwater photography means that some other subject, like exposure, had to be scanted.

Another opportunity that was missed was the discussion of digital photography. Given that more than half of new cameras sold are now digital, this should have been an important emphasis in the book. Yet I don't recall that there was a single mention of histograms (a display of the distribution of light values in a picture) which are one of the most significant advantages of digital cameras. (I couldn't look up histograms in the index because there was none; a serious omission in a reference book!) Four pages were devoted to film itself but not a page was devoted to digital capture media.

There is a section on digital processing but I expect that only the experienced user of PhotoShop, clearly not the audience for this book, would understand it.

Each of the many photographs in the book includes a discussion of the circumstances under which it was taken with some shooting data. Some readers will undoubtedly find this feature useful if they give the material thoughtful analysis.

Some of the information in the book is wrong or misleading. For example the author suggests that longer focal length lenses have shallower depth of field. But for a given image size on the media and the same aperture, depth of field is the same regardless of focal length. The author also suggests that digital media don't suffer reciprocity failure during long exposures. That is true, but she doesn't mention that there is usually increased electronic noise.

In summary this is a beautiful book, aimed at the beginning photographer that tries a different graphic design approach to instruction. It's too bad that more emphasis was not given to topics important to the beginner.

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent, November 8, 2009

By 

Jackal (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The AVA Guide to Outdoor Photography (The Ava Guides S.) (Paperback)

This book has short sections on most outdoor themes. The text is quite sparse, but the picture are quite nice and instructive.

I just bought my first DSLR camera. I bought ten photography books on amazon. I'm evaluating these books from the perspective of a semi-advanced amateur.