Customer Reviews

Westwood Light and Lens Bundle: Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a photographer and college photography educator, I'm extremely excited about Robert Hirsch's new book Light & Lens: Photography in the Digital Age. We have adopted it in our photography department at Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico. I consider this an unusual textbook; even a pioneer book because of how it blurs the line between textbook and art book.

It is an ambitious work in that it presents an immense amount of complex technical information very clearly and succinctly without leaving anything out, weaves historical information throughout, challenges students (everyone!) to "think critically" about the photograph and their own work at every turn, coaches, encourages, and it is ALSO beautifully designed - giving each artwork featured a real presence that inspires students. It is obvious Hirsch is a generous educator, active photographer, and thinker.

The layout is elegant - really elegant (it even has a dust jacket!) so students and photography enthusiasts are buying an "art book" that has value beyond its wealth as a textbook.

The scale of the book is about 7X17" opened with about 400 pages but looks small and is lightweight which I think was smart for a `heavyweight' subject. It can be held comfortably in the hand for good contemplative reading or placed easily on a small digital work station where it can be used as a technical reference or reference for the many innovative assignments included.

It was obviously designed for those who love photography and want to see (or have their student's see) a bigger "picture" about image making in the digital age. It is for the instructor who sees students intimidated by the larger digital texts that are completely techie-oriented and don't usually address the important issues of personal process, critical theory, and the content and context of imagery. Here is a wonderful marriage of the craft and content of making photographs in the digital age and the book's physicality exemplifes that too.

I am an amateur photographer moving towards a serious enthusiast. I love this book! Its writing style is engaging and its design is smart--timely boxes with just enough information and intelligently chosen pictures to illustrate each section's point. I like that each picture is explained by its author in candid and sophisticated ways. Chapters contain exercises chosen from a wide array of successful teaching experiences. As you browse over this handsome book, you are reminded that photography is art not just a trade to make money.
The presentation of chapters and ideas within each chapter is methodical. This book could only have been written by an excellent teacher. Often I find myself learning or remembering things that I already knew but failed to connected them before. The book devotes time to provide and explain information which is either discussed lightly or not even mentioned in other books.
I'm a small person so I love the size of this book too! I can carry it everywhere I go. To me, this book is a great investment. Thanks Mr. Hirsch.

I used Light & Lens by Hirsch for the first time as a textbook for my two photo-1 classes (13 F2F and 10 Online students). There are many things everyone liked about the book and a number of annoyances to be (hopefully) eliminated in the next edition. I will use this textbook again. First the good: The book has an interesting 3:4 Screen Aspect ratio with extended front and back cover flaps to use as placeholders. At every point the book has artists' images with fairly complete comments by the artist. Most of these images are very contemporary. For the most part the content is complete and detailed enough to be useful for the beginning art photographer. Several sections are exemplary - for example the section on writing artist's statements. Now the bad: The small grey font used is very difficult for older readers to read. Bad Design which seems to be the norm in a lot of books in recent years. I guess this is what is being taught in design schools these days. Legibility and Readability suffers. The writing is not up to Hirsch's usual standard for correctness and clarity. His books on Color Photography and History of Photography are much better written. So there is hope for a revised edition of this book. The chapter 8 is especially poorly written and full of errors. In general there are far too many errors of one type or another in the whole text and I would hope the author would bring in a larger group of reviewers to help clean this up. In summary, I will use this book again, even as I look for a better textbook. I hope the author will revise and improve this book since it has the potential to become a classic art photo textbook.

The range covered by this book is extremely broad, possibly too broad, forcing a degree of superficiality in some areas.
The writing is generally good, if occasionally a bit "flowery" as observed by another reviewer.
The most serious adverse criticism is the number of errors. Some of these would seem to be due to mistaken proof-reading, such as the use of the word "logarithm" (twice in the same section) where "algorithm" is clearly meant. Others are perhaps just slips of the pen, but they can be confusing if you are't already familiar with the subject. Others are just minor typos, but taken all together, they do detract from what was nearly an excellent work.

The is a required text for my Color PHotography class. The book is geared to those who want to learn more about color theory. It does a thorough job in the area of basic photography theory as well. The assignments are creative and relate nicely to the theory described.

it is just like a new one, except just a little highline in it. but that's fine. easy to review. lol

If you own a camera you must own this book. If you're already shooting, thinking about shooting, or want to increase your understanding I highly recommend this book. I'm a photographer and a student of photography and this book has helped me grow tremendously, it seems like everything that was lacking, every question I had was answered in this book. Dont buy another book without checking this one out, you wont be sorry.

i love this book. the pictures are very cool and the techniques you learn are very beneficial.

i enjoy aspects of this book, find it to be a little dogmatic as far as the theory/conceptual side of photography. would like if it focused more on technical aspects. otherwise well written and definitely thought out.

enjoyed this book as well. I needed it for school and got it on time and in great condition.