Customer Reviews

Wild Bird Photography: National Audubon Society Guide

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In general, I think you'll find other books on bird photography that are better, although beginners may find this book somewhat useful and may enjoy some of the photographs.

My biggest problem with this book is its layout. Specifically, the amount of text relative to the number of pictures is just too small, meaning it's missing a lot of real "meat". Traditional wildlife photography books vary the amount of text on each page, with more when adjacent to smaller photographs and less for larger photographs. If you've read John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide, you know exactly what I'm talking about and probably have become used to this style. Unfortunately, in this book, the text is always in a single vertical column down the page and placed next to one or more photographs. This really limits the amount of text on each page and in the book overall. The total page count is 109.

When I purchased this book, I purchased Arthur Morris' The Art of Bird Photography as well, and would recommend it over Wild Bird Photography. It has at least 3 to 5 times as much material as the book from Tim Fitzharris with a page count of 156.

As far as the content of the book itself, you're going to get a cursory commentary on how to select the right camera and lens, as well as other equipment and accessories. Subsequent chapters will cover light, composition, and blinds and bird behavior. There is no discussion of exposure theory, although maybe the author assumes you already have this knowledge. There is a very small amount of coverage on the digital darkroom, but given the books publishing in 1996, it's a bit outdated.

(Note: The author does briefly mention exposure, although he states that bracketing should be used to ensure properly exposed images. While bracketing is useful, especially with digital photography, this is contradictory to other author's opinions as it's important to be ready when the right moment presents itself. This reinforces my comments above about this book being aimed more at beginners.)

My suggestion is to consider buying John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide and Arthur Morris' The Art of Bird Photography together. These two books combined will cover the nature photography spectrum, with emphasis on bird photography coming from Arthur, and should provide you with the proper balance of knowledge and skills.

OK, I am an avid Tim Fitzharris fan. I find his photography to be exquisite, and his writing style equally as good! He is a master at explaing his techniques of photography, and most of them deal with both film and digital (a little more on film, but then he has been involved in photography a long time - like me!) Like his other books, I wish I had made every photograph in it! I always take my Tim Fitzharris books to the Photography classes I teach. They are superlative examples of great photography as well as great learning aides. My students buy many of his books as a result. They almost always hang around after class to look through them, and then go online to Amazon to buy them. I cannot recommend This book highly enough. He has excellent techniques for getting great photographs of wild birds, and you will find this book extremely valuable in those efforts. I know I have. I don't have all of Tim Fitzharris's books yet, but I'm working on it!!

I purchased this book for my daughter as a gift. She said it was very good.