Customer Reviews

How to Photograph Water (How To Photograph Series)

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First of all, I never understood why the name of the book is "How To ....". All you get here some nice and spectacular pictures which contain some sort of water. This book never explained how to photograph various styles like stucco effect, rococo or cloudy effects. What are suitable film speed, shutter speed and weather condition required for a particular style. All you get here are what camera, what lens and what film used for the pictures. For taking water pictures, especially moving water, the most important thing is shutter speed. Choosing the shutter speed makes the style. Surprisingly the writer ignored it. If you want to get a book with beautiful pictures from all over the world, go ahead and buy it. If you want to learn HOW TO photograph water, DO NOT buy this book.

This book contains some nice photographs of water-based landscapes, but teaches little about technique, composition, shutter speed etc. for photographing water.

Living close to the beach and waterfalls, I was somewhat disapointed in the content. Too much of the early chapters were taken up with general photographic principles and not enough specifics were provided on the actual subject - how to photograph water. Good pictures, but if you are looking for a comprehensive instructional source, this is not it.

This book is a must for any budding landscape photographer with an interest in capturing that most elusive of elements- water. Angel includes expert tips on photographing water in all its forms- liquid, frozen, mist, with wildlife, abstract & macro and is superbly presented and photographed to boot. This volume is destined to become a well thumbed fixture on my bookshelf

This book takes a slightly different approach from most nature photography books. Rather than attempt to cover the entire range of nature photography, Angel focuses on just one aspect of the environment, water, but she views it in all its forms and she looks at other subject matter that interacts with water.

She starts the book with a rather general discussion of the photography of water, including equipment, films, lighting and exposure. The reader who is already a nature photographer will probably find that the equipment he or she already owns is just fine for the task at hand, although there are a few things the author suggests adding to the water photographer's tool box that one might not have considered.

Next the author provides a gallery of her own work that is both inspirational and instructive. This is followed by chapters on water in its various forms: calm water, moving water, frozen water and water vapor. These chapters are chock full of useful tips. However they come at you so fast that you probably won't remember them all. Instead, the photographer would be wise to review an applicable chapter before going out and shooting in one of these environments.

Finally she mentions several kinds of photography that couldn't be neatly categorized into a prior chapter, like water and wildlife, water abstracts and close-ups.

The book is illustrated with the author's excellent pictures, and in each case she tells you what influenced her to approach the subject in a particular way. She does not dwell on questions like exposure. Instead the book is aimed primarily at intermediate to advanced photographers who do not expect a quick solution to problems but are happy to accept a few suggestions.

Unfortunately the book, published in 1999, makes no reference to digital photography. In fact, a good deal of material deals with the problems of film. While a competent digital photographer can make the translation to the digital world, much of the film talk will just be excess material to digital camera owners. I look forward to a digital edition of this book.

I was interested in this book because I've noticed that certain of my pictures of water needed improving. I didn't get a simple answer to solving my problem. However, I felt the author pointed me in the right direction and that she made me aware of approaches to water photography that I had not considered.