Professional Secrets of Nature Photography: Essential Skills for Photographing Outdoors [Paperback]

Judy Holmes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2000

Outdoor photography presents a unique set of challenges for photographers. This book profiles 60 of the author's own images to teach the craft of nature photography. Tips are given on identifying the best subjects for a photograph-be it a flower, landscape, or wildlife. Photographers learn to work in natural light, evaluate how light effects work best with specific subjects, what weather conditions, and which times of day yield the best light. Picking the right equipment-lenses, tripods, lights, cameras, and filters-is also discussed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Judy Holmes has a craftsman degree from the Professional Photographers of America and her work has been sponsored by Hasselblad and Kodak. She lives in Jackson, New Hampshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 123 pages
• Publisher: Amherst Media (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584280212
• ISBN-13: 978-1584280217
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,206,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful, Insightful Photography Book for All Levels!, August 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Professional Secrets of Nature Photography: Essential Skills for Photographing Outdoors (Paperback)

Judy is a magnificent and insightful photographer and teacher. One of the world's foremost outdoor photographers and certainly the best woman in her field. Her images are beautiful and her dignified teaching methodology is understandable, down-to-earth, and inspiring to amateurs and experts alike. There is something here for everyone. Her powerfully beautiful animal portraits and landscape images by themselves are worth the the price of the book--the descriptions of how each image was made is the frosting on the cake. Enjoy!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Quite disappointing, September 24, 2001

By 

Bear (Richmond Hill, ON Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Secrets of Nature Photography: Essential Skills for Photographing Outdoors (Paperback)

This slim volume includes brief and elementary advice on equipment and film, composition, and exposure. Despite its title, it includes very little advice about dealing with nature as a subject.

The 114-page book includes 38 full-page or near-full-page photographs along with the photographs on most other pages. This reader would have been happy with more smaller photographs and much more useful text. Also, while there are some fine images in the book, there are many surprisingly weak ones which seem more than artistically or subjectively out of range - they look like amateur snapshots.

In its favour, this book offers a simple and accessible introduction to the elementary basics of composition. It also offers more examples than many better books do of a few of the topics being discussed. For example, a discussion of eliminating clutter from a frame has three large photographs of the same subject illustrating the topic.

However in the end I can't recommend this to anyone other than rank beginners in photography. Many of the elementary ideas in the book are found other beginner's guides and magazine or web articles. The purported subject of this book - nature photography - is far better introduced and illuminated in books by John Shaw and Tim Fitzharris, and in stunningly-beautiful books by Niall Benvie. Many of these books, too, offer much of the basic advice found in this book, and are a smarter buy.