Photography Outdoors: A Field Guide for Travel & Adventure Photographers [Paperback]

Mark Gardner (Author), Art Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

Definitive guide for amateur outdoor and adventure photographers looking to hone their skills.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How many times have you gotten back from a great trip, had those rolls of film developed, and then discovered that what you thought was a fabulous shot of a grazing moose or the Eiffel Tower by moonlight turned out to be less than spectacular? For all you National Geographic hopefuls, this is the book for you. This slim volume packs a world of information between its covers: chapters on composing photographs, the character of light, and how to measure it to determine exposure are followed by ones on camera equipment and how to get the best shots while adventuring and traveling. The book is intended for anyone with a 35 mm camera, from the simplest point-and-shoot variety to the most sophisticated single-lens-reflex model. Best of all, the book is small enough and light enough to take along with you on your travels.

Review

This is a good instructional guide to getting the view that you see to become the shot you want. -- Idaho Falls Post-Register

Product Details

• Paperback: 126 pages
• Publisher: Mountaineers Books (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898864305
• ISBN-13: 978-0898864304
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Must Disagree!, February 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Photography Outdoors: A Field Guide for Travel & Adventure Photographers (Paperback)

With a number of glowing recommendations already written about this book I hesitate to express my disappointment. This is a less than memorable effort. The writing style is wordy and covers no new ground. For a beginner this book should be useful but no more. The photos have sparse details as to technique and technical information.

For a far better source try Campbell's Backpackers's Handbook. That book will challenge and inspire photographers of all level of ability.

Each to his own.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's All in There!, April 28, 2003

By 

Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Photography Outdoors: A Field Guide for Travel and Adventure Photographers (Paperback)

At first glance this looks like an ideal book for someone who is moving from the point-and-shoot stage of photography to something beyond snapshots. Everything most people want to know about photography from the relationships of f-stops, shutter speed and film speed all the way to underwater photography is in this book. Unfortunately the book throws the information at you so quickly and with so little discussion and few examples of applications that you may miss some very important concepts and confuse others.

It would be nice to think that a person could improve his or her photography without a lot of effort, but that just isn't so. It's not enough to have a new rule thrown at you. Most people need photography principles to be explained, usually in several different ways, with plenty of examples. You'd expect lots of pictures to be used to illustrate points. After all, this is about photography. But that is not the approach taken by this book. The principles are stated, and later in the book, restated, but not illustrated well.

It's really a shame, because this book is small enough to carry with you in case you want to check on something in the field. Art Wolfe, whose pictures appear throughout the book, is one of the great outdoor photographers (Gardner's pictures also appear to a lesser extent, but they aren't in the same league as Wolfe's.). Unfortunately the pictures aren't tied to the teaching points very strongly. That's a shame because stronger ties to Wolfe's pictures could really teach one about outdoor photography.

The book gives a nod to incorporating digital photography, but only in the most rudimentary fashion. For example, I consider an understanding of "white balance" to be essential for a serious digital photographer, but this book just barely acknowledges that there is such a thing.

There are several mistakes in this book. A chart on page 83 suggesting exposure guidelines for low-light photography captions a column ISO 50 (film speed) when it means ISO 400. Follow these guidelines and your picture will be hopelessly underexposed.

The author discusses pushing film. This process involves setting your camera as if the film you are using is more sensitive than it really is and then asking your lab to develop the film in a way that will make it that sensitive. The author says that pushed film is less grainy then film with a higher rating shot and developed normally. It's not true. If it were, all we'd ever need is one speed of film.

If I absolutely needed a guide that would fit in my pocket in the field I'd consider this book. Otherwise I'd buy a book like John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide. It's physically bigger, but will be more effective in improving your outdoor photography.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty ordinary book, June 14, 2001

By 

Timothy J. Triche, Jr. (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Photography Outdoors: A Field Guide for Travel & Adventure Photographers (Paperback)

I suppose if you were absolutely just starting out, and didn't want to visit photo.net or other websites, this book might be a good, concise source of basic information. However, I bought it and was disappointed. I'm not a professional photographer, but I'm apparently a little beyond the target audience of this book, which puzzles me because I still sometimes take shots I don't like. It's not a *bad* book, it's just overshadowed by some *great* books that happen to compete directly with it!

If you are a climber or mountaineer, I would urge you to look at Jeff Achey's 'Guide to Climbing Photography' instead. If you're just interested in nature photography in general, you can't go wrong with Galen Rowell's books, the man is a master of the craft and not as climbing-centric as Achey. Clyde Soles has some terrific photos up on his website, too -- he's no Rowell, but he's also no slouch at outdoor photography. And his articles in Rock and Ice magazine are often quite good, too. This book just isn't worth buying in a world with great online resources and great printed how-to books like Achey's and Rowell's.