Customer Reviews

Photographing Creative Landscapes: Simple Tools for Artistic Images and Enhanced Creativity

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In Photographing Creative Landscapes: Simple Tools For Artistic Images And Enhanced Creativity, professional landscape photographer Michael Orton shows how to expand one's creativity and learn to photograph artistic images drawn from the world that surrounds us. He shows how to develop a more artistic approach to photography, expand options for photographing the landscape, how to apply creative photographic controls to any image, as well as find sources of creative inspiration and using them to improve photographic works. Orton also draws upon his many years of expertise and experience to show how to use color to capture mood and emotion; add motion for dynamic images; capture subtle details; the dramatic use of natural light; adding flash for artistic effects; incorporation multiple exposures and sandwiched images for a "painterly" look. Photographing Creative Landscapes is enthusiastically recommended for students of photography in general, and photography buffs seeking to improve their images of natural landscapes in particular.

I found the book very interesting and helpful. It challenges and motivates the reader to be creative when indulging in photography, thus rising above the level of record-type shotmaking. It is not a technical "how-to" book although many technical guide lines are given, often succintly.
However, the book is somewhat dated in as much as it refers extensively to Orton's slide sandwiching techniques. More examples and discussion of digital photographic techniques would be welcome.
Overall it is a book that should be of value to any amateur landscape photographer.

This is a super book for the advanced photographer. I doesn't teach you nuts and bolts, but makes you think outside the box of normal photography. It teaches you the creative side of it. If you love photography this is a must have....

I received this book for Christmas, and it was a very quick read ... but I will read it again many times. And here is why - it scratches my creative itch, and if I don't happen to have an itch, it creates one for me.

The book was not quite what I expected - I thought it would have more about the Orton Effect and the technical side of image processing to create effects using image sandwiching. The OE is covered in a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the book (and backed up by a number of excellent example images, outlining various aspects of image sandwiching).

Instead, it is a treatise on creativity, and a good one at that. My pedantic left brain appreciated the organization of the text, complete with "checklists" of items to consider for each exposure. And my newly developing right brain especially appreciated the wonderfully extensive galleries, filled with creative images that underscore the points made in the text.

While it is an older (2001) book, sharply focused on the use of slide film for creating image sandwiches, the transition to the digital darkroom will be a piece of cake, and will greatly increase the creative possibilities, using masks, layers, blend modes, etc. In fact, as soon as I finish this review, I'll be heading over to my studio computer to try out a couple of things that were inspired by the book.

All in all, a solid reference on creativity, and one that I will pull off the shelf again and again and again as I work on expanding my creative repertoire.

Thanks for the inspiration, Michael.