A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Landscape Photography (Digital Photography) [Paperback]

John Clements (Author)

Book Description

Series: Digital Photography | Publication Date: May 28, 2003

By thoroughly dissecting and annotating sumptuous digital landscapes, this second title in the Digital Photography series reveals the secrets of creating great landscape pictures. Find out how to manipulate point of view, light, arrangement, and timing for superb, artistic results. With a little imagination and digital retouching, it's possible to "change the weather" in a photo or produce dramatic effects. See how to get giant images and panoramas (great for mountain ranges or cityscapes), correct slants, boost a picture's brightness and sharpness, add layers of color, combine images in a montage, and more!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Clements has practiced cut-and-thrust swordsmanship for almost 20 years and trains regularly in long-sword, sword and shield, sword and buckler, sword and dagger, Medieval spear, and rapier and dagger methods. He lectures on historical weaponry and is an ardent promoter of contact-weapon sparring with historical replica swords.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: AVA Publishing (May 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 2884790101
• ISBN-13: 978-2884790109
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,601,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Quite Comprehensive, September 1, 2003

By 

Bruce Appelbaum (Yorktown Heights, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Landscape Photography (Digital Photography) (Paperback)

This book provides a terrific overview of digital manipulations of landscape photos using Photoshop. For each of the sample photos in the book, the author provides a step by step guide from camera to final print.

My major quibble is the actual format of the book. At 7.5 x 9 inches, the page size is much too small. The illustrations of the intermediate steps and some of the computer screenshots are too small to be effective. A larger format book would have been much better.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Comprehensive, July 19, 2005

By 

Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Landscape Photography (Digital Photography) (Paperback)

This is a hard book to get your mind around. It is so obviously well intentioned and aims at filling a real need. After all, digital media does offer tools to landscape and other photographers and has limitations that film doesn't have.

Moreover, the publishers, in this and other books in their photography series, have come up with a different approach to teaching photography. The usual approach has been to have a narrative about some aspect of photography and then to provide examples, with each part building on the material previously presented. The AVA books instead start with a picture and then try to show the decisions and processes that the photographer used to get the final product. But they've gone even further imposing a strict graphic format for each subject. They start with a relevant quotation from the photographer. Then across a two-page spread, that includes the photograph, they give general tips, Down the left hand of the spread a flow chart of the photographer's actions is provided from capturing the image to creating an ink jet print. The author divides the brief discussion of the picture into three sections entitled shoot, enhance and enjoy.

The problem for me was that the digital process was not developed coherently. Rather, the entire process was set forth again and again and again. But as it was set forth it never described the steps taken in anything but the most general way. If one is an advanced photographer and already knows what is involved, the picture and spread might serve as an idea book. But if that was the author's purpose, it might have helped to discuss where the photographer's ideas came from.

In addition, many of the pictures were composites or involved extreme manipulation of the image, such as by twisting it around. My guess is that the average landscape photographer is not interested in surrealism but wants to know how he can make a picture that he took look more like what he envisioned at the time of capture.

This book also gave me the impression that it was designed to provide its audience with small bits and pieces, as if that audience would be unable to grasp some larger, more comprehensive view.

For some one interested in learning about digital photography, this book is not the place to start. Instead I would suggest something like "Photoshop CS2 Workflow" by Tim Grey, or if one wanted a tutorial approach, Barry Haynes' "Photoshop Artistry" book.

3.0 out of 5 stars A lightweight..., October 14, 2004

By 

Photomad (Christchurch, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Landscape Photography (Digital Photography) (Paperback)

After reading the review suggesting this book is a little too much and it involves throwing around large files etc, I thought that this would be a high end book and something I would be interested in. Well Im a bit sad to say its very light on material. If your a beginner you may get a kick out of it but anything more than that you will be very dissapointed in this title. Much better books out there.