The Making of Landscape Photographs: A Practical Guide to the Art and Techniques [Paperback]

Charlie Waite (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1993

Using his own photographs to illustrate the text, Charlie Waite explains the basis of his success as a landscape photographer. From the choice of camera and lens to the subtleties of lighting and composition, from manipulating the image to extracting the essential elements of a scene, he brings his years of practical experience to bear on the subject. The book contains many practical tips for the budding landscape photographer, but technical mastery is only one part of the story. The author aims, above all, to instill in readers his own love of landscape, and to encourage them to respond to, and capture, the world around them. Charlie Waite's prize-winning books include Landscape in Britain, Landscape in France, and Landscape in Italy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Anova Books (April 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1855851490
• ISBN-13: 978-1855851498
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #610,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb. Inspirational., April 14, 2002

By 

Marius S. (San Jose, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Making of Landscape Photographs: A Practical Guide to the Art and Techniques (Paperback)

Charlie Waite is my favorite landscape photographer. Galen Rowell, John Shaw, and Art Wolfe to name a few usually does little to nothing for me. But when I look at Charlie Waite, I'm spellbound. I picked this book up again recently and again it is sooo inspirational. Excellent. I like the tone Charlie Waite writes in as well.

The book consists of 150 color photographs, all of which are 6x6 pictures (Hasselblad). Most pictures have not been cropped, so if you have strong distaste against the square format you're going to miss out ;) This is by no means a medium format photography book, though. Other than the fact that the pictures are taken with a medium format camera, everything in this book is about the picture itself.

The contents are:
- Introduction: A Frame of Mind
- The Arrangement of Parts
- Simplicity
- Right Time, Right Place
- Lenses
- Movement and Exposure
- Manipulating the Image
- The Play of Light
- Colour in its Place
- Sky and the Landscape
- Water and the Landscape
- Buildings and the Landscape
- The Big View
- The Intimacies of the Landscape
- The Final Shape

The format of the book is one picture per page, some text about the picture and composition and a "Points to Watch" box. There is also a box for each picture giving the technical data, but don't let that fool you into thinking that this is a technical book. It's a book that shows pictures and what the photographer thinks about each one. It's not a book that will take you step-by-step through anything.

Charlie Waite is based in UK, so most of the photographs are from Europe.

Also see my review of Charlie Waite's "Seeing Landscapes" which is not too different from this book, but different enough to be worth having too.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful intro to art & technique of landscape photography, November 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Making of Landscape Photographs: A Practical Guide to the Art and Techniques (Paperback)

I would highly recommend _The Making of Landscape Photographs_. The book is comprised of 150 photographs, each one with discussion of what makes the image work (or not work; he's generous in showing things that didn't work out). Watie discusses both composition and technical details, but he relates the tech side to the artisitic success: "Only a polarising filter has been used to deepend the richness of the sky and to bring out the beautiful wispiness of the clouds, as an effective contrast with the hard-edged shapes of the village below them."

The photographs are beautifully printed. Waite uses a 6x6 (square format) camera. One quibble: in some cases the book prints a square image across a two-page spread. It's a nice effect, with full bleeds on three sides, but it makes it hard to take in the full image across the gutter. It's a minor point. Overall, the book is both beautiful to look at and extremely useful to any photographer who wants to improve his landscape photography.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on Landscape Photography in recent times, September 24, 1999

By 

Arup Biswas (Campbell, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Making of Landscape Photographs: A Practical Guide to the Art and Techniques (Paperback)

In this book Charlie Waite,world's leading Landscape photographer has beautifully illustrated various aspects of Landscape Photography. This book is a class apart from other contemporary books on the subject, in the sense that it is not only confined to the mechanical details of technical information. Rather, it guides the reader through a visual journey of carefully selected photographs and helps to develop a poetic eye towards the most beautiful and difficult subject of photography, the landscape. Charlie has been generous enough with the detailed technical details of each photograph. Especially helpful are his Points to watch, golden tips, acquired in years of dedication, passed on from a maestro to his students. The photographs are exquisite, sometimes transcending beyond photographs into the world of fine art painting. This book is for anyone who has slightest interest in Landscape Photography. Let me conclude after concurring with "The Independent": Charlie has put the soul back into Landscape Photography.