Camera Creative: Professional Photography Techniques for Innovative Images [Paperback]

Chris Gatcum (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 3, 2009

Get the secrets behind cool, creative techniques your camera manual won't teach you!
 
Amateur photographers looking to go beyond the basics will love this collection of 52 ways to take "wow" shots. These are the techniques you won't find in any camera manual, from exciting photo-taking ideas to post-processing tips and even gear you can make at home on the cheap, including flash diffusers, reflectors, filter gels, lenses, and more. Throughout, you'll get expert insights, simple step-by-step instructions, and eye-popping photos from both amateur and professional photographers. If you're ready to push your camera further, break some rules, and take stunning, innovative images, Camera Creative will show you how.

Look inside for the secrets behind 52 of today's most popular creative photo techniques, including:
 
•Bokeh
•Water-droplet reflections
•Fake tilt-shift (model world)
•TTV (through the viewfinder)
•Small-world panos
•HDR
•Reverse lens macro
•Holga hacks
•Star trails
•And much more!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

CHRIS GATCUM is an award-winning photographer and frequent contributor of technical and technique-based photography articles to various online and print publications. Formerly the technical editor for What Digital Camera? magazine and a technical writer for Amateur Photographer magazine, he is currently managing editor at Ilex Press

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Amphoto Books; Original edition (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0817424504
• ISBN-13: 978-0817424503
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 0.5 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,015,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My New Fav Photography Book January 25, 2010

By C. L. Hauri

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am an amateur photography using a Canon Rebel XSi. I have bought so many books regarding specific areas of photography and I was looking for a book that would help with my creativity versus technique. I thought I would give this book a try and I read through the entire book the moment it arrived. Most of my photography books are great for reference or good to skim through to find what you want, but this book is full of great information and ideas that I found very helpful. Here are some of my favorite areas that this book discusses:

1. Diffraction Star effects (chapter 3)
2. Creative Bokeh (chapter 5)
3. Night Photography and Star Trails (chapter 8)
4. Shooting Smoke (chapter 12)
5. Reverse Lens Macro (chapter 21)
6. Light Cube - creating a light cube out of a cardboard box (chapter 27)
7. The entire Lighting Gear section (chapters 32-40)
8. Several chapters in the Digital Processing and Printing section

This book has many great ideas if you are looking to get more creative in your work. The BEST part about this book is that for each technique, there is a box that tells you what you need to do the technique and another box that provides tips on using the technique. While I don't have all the equipment for some of the techniques (like an off-camera flash for shooting smoke), I can still do most of these techniques and will try the others once I am able to get the items needed.

While I may not use every technique in this book, like the camera tossing technique - this book is great at showing you what can be done with a little creativity. Again, out of all the photography books I have (probably around 30 of them), this one is definitely my favorite.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent curiousity builder! March 15, 2010

By Angela

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I disagree with Craig Oberon's review. I think that this book encourages a photographer to become more creative. It teaches a variety of already established techniques for "some" creativity but by all means leaves room for individual creativity. I have repeated many of the examples in this book--I am not yet finished reading the entire book.

I am a semi-pro photographer going professional as we speak. For me, this book has provided the technical know-how to those creative shots that I have seen others do and although I have tried myself in the past, I was not very successful at. Now, with information from this book, I am learning what I need to do to make those shots successful.

I think that if you are a photographer with talent and great eyes, this book will provide the technical background to open up your avenue of creativity. If you have no artistic talent (not all people are artists!) but have technical know-how, yes, this book is not going to be of help. Creative eyes and the talent for the arts cannot be taught to you by any book... creative eyes need to be developed by you for your own self--it is possible to do but it is a job you have to do on your own. This book cannot tell you which flower to look at from the many in the field to get a great shot. But what this book can teach you is how to be creative with the particular flower you picked to be photographed from the many in the field.

If you want someone to hold your hands to show you "how to have creativity," no book will help...

To those who have artistic aptitude or daring to explore, I highly recommend this book! If you want to look at some examples of my work as a result of this book, check out some of the pictures that were taken on or after the 13th of March, 2010 here: [...]

5.0 out of 5 stars Have fun with your camera February 1, 2010

By M. Assink-kleve

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Great book, lots of ideas for creating special effects, amazing photographs, cheap do it yourself solutions and that all in a beautiful book with good explanations.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Tips and Tricks February 21, 2010

By Conrad J. Obregon TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

What serious photographer doesn't want to improve his creativity? With a title like "Camera Creative", this book sounds like an ideal tool to use.

The book is organized into six sections with 52 chapters, each two to four pages long. The first section, called "Creative Shooting", suggests a number of tips or techniques like soft focus and painting with light. The second section, "Lenses and Accessories" contain chapters like reversing lenses for macro shooting and making a pinhole lens. Next is a section called "Lighting Gear" that tells how to construct equipment like portable diffusers and beauty dishes. The final section deals with processing and printing and covers information like how to use Photoshop to create an image that looks like a manipulated Polaroid shot and how to create panoramas. Each chapter contains a list of materials required and a difficulty rating, as well as step-by-step instructions.

This book does not talk about how to develop your creativity, but rather focuses on some unusual, and sometimes on some rather common, tips and techniques. How useful these tips will be to a particular photographer depends on how much studying the photographer has already done and what the photographer is interested in capturing. For example most portrait photography books will mention how to make soft focus images. Similarly, capturing a splash of water from a pellet dropped into the water may be interesting to look at, but not something a particular photographer may want to do. The various construction projects may seem fine for the do-it-yourself photographer, but others may not be interested in presenting their subjects with a nerdy-looking piece of equipment that doesn't seem very professional.... The processing tips won't be enough to teach someone about image processing software but are aimed at making digital images look like some other technology. On the other hand, if you want to make your ink-jet print look like a cyanotype, or to modify a cheap Holga camera to take better pictures, or create a stereo image, this book will give you a few hints. Most people may find a tip or two that interests them but it's also possible that none of the tips will be useful.

I acknowledge that I have a dislike of tip books, believing that teaching fundamentals is more useful than showing how to achieve a particular effect. On the other hand if you are interested in learning how to make a single splashy image (pun intended) it might be worthwhile to browse through this book. Read more ›