Author: Niall Benvie

Publisher: Photographers’ Institute Press

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

It’s been almost ten years since Niall Benvie released a book. I’ve always thought of him as the thinking person’s outdoor photographer, more concerned with vision than technique. Now, at last, he has written a book for the digital age, Outdoor Photography Masterclass.

The book takes a strange form, as if it were a three-day long workshop. (Occasionally it seemed as if it might have been taken from a transcript of such a workshop.) Each of the chapters is on a different subject, often unrelated, from simple matters, like using the histogram to determine the right exposure, to esoteric subjects, like whether nature photography is art. There is no consistent development of a single theme other than the broad subject of outdoor photography. Many of the chapters, which may have been derived from articles, are more thought provoking about the nature of photography than they are about technique, although some, like the article on what Benvie calls the field studio (a method of shooting in the field with artificial backgrounds and lighting), are about technique in the service of vision.

The skill levels to which these subjects will appeal varies. The chapter on the development module in Lightroom is so elementary that it will at most simply be a refresher for those just getting into the software. The chapter entitled “How shall we critique outdoor photography” may be useful and thought provoking for the more advanced outdoor photographer.

Benvie is a bit of an iconoclast, suggesting, for example, that in the age of fast, low noise ISO’s there is less need for tripods. He also appears to be almost distant from some technical aspects of post processing as when he states that the contact sheet facility once found in Photoshop is no longer available (it’s available for Photoshop CS5 as a downloadable optional plug-in) or when he fails to make the distinction between input and output sharpening, so brilliantly articulated in Lightroom.

Although the book is nicely illustrated, many of the screen shots of Photoshop and Lightroom screens are so small as to be almost useless, and often the accompanying description is too cursory.

Yet despite my criticism’s, for the outdoor photographer who has gone beyond the fundamentals, many of the articles will prove provocative enough to make the reader reexamine the way he or she is working and perhaps even try some changes in their photographic process.
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Author: Stephen Laskevitch

Publisher: Rocky Nook

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

When I first learned to use Photoshop, there was no Bridge, no Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and no Lightroom. Even so, it took several books and advice from more experienced users to get a handle on the software. As new features were added, I had to keep working to learn how to edit images. Now Stephen Laskevitch proposes to initiate the new user to everything Photoshop in one swoop in Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3: A Photographer’s Handbook. For those not familiar with the software, Bridge and ACR are included with Photoshop but function much like separate pieces of software. Lightroom functionality overlaps with ACR and Bridge.

The book begins by defining the terms and concepts the author considers necessary to master Adobe’s image processing tools, followed by the configuration settings he considers essential. Next the author tours the screens of Photoshop, Bridge, ACR and Lightroom and considers the steps to take to import images and organize them. There are chapters on global adjustments, local adjustments, cleanup and retouching, creative edits and output. His method is to describe similar functions in each of the pieces of software at one time.

This is an interesting pedagogical approach. There are many functions that are similar in adjusting images in Photoshop, ACR and Lightroom. For example, tone can be adjusted in all three tools with a form of the curves tool. But each of these curve tools has just a slightly different way of being applied. For the new user, covering these subjects together can easily generate confusion. Moreover, probably because a book ultimately must have some page limits, specific instruction for any one particular mode was sometimes scanted. I would think that for the new user it would be better to deal with Photoshop, ACR and Lightroom separately, and to use one piece of software well before trying to learn another, especially since both ACR and Lightroom on their own can probably handle most of the adjustments that a new user would need.

Add to that the fact that the new user probably would benefit from plenty of practical examples of using the functions. While the author does give a few practical examples, most of the instruction is of a narrative sort. Moreover, some of the narrative just skims the surface, such as the discussion of noise reduction in ACR and Lightroom, which presents the luminescence and color sliders but doesn’t discuss the detail sliders that go with them.

Like virtually every book that introduces beginners to photo-processing, Laskevitch discuses the effects of the various buttons and sliders on images, but doesn’t suggest when a certain adjustment would be most appropriate to help the photographer achieve his or her vision and that’s too bad since it could be a strong motivational factor for the beginner.

It’s easy for a tyro to get discouraged trying to learn to use image processing software. Bundling interwoven explanations of several different pieces together in a single book makes it just that much harder.

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Author: Lance Keimig

Publisher: Focal Press

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

As an optical instrument, the human eye is generally better than the camera, with a wider dynamic range. But in one case, night photography, because of the ability of camera media to keep gathering light over time, the camera may actually be better able to see in the dark. In “Night Photography: Finding your way in the dark” Lance Keimig attempts to explain how to capitalize on this ability.

After a brief history of night photography the author begins with a discussion of the equipment to use. At first the owner of a digital SLR may feel slighted because he is not shooting a large format film camera which the author favors, but most of the book recognizes that many night photographers will be digital single lens reflex owners. The author provides general instruction in the process of night photography, although one may come away with the impression that night photography doesn’t vary much from day photography with a few exceptions. For example, auto-focus will not work in the dark so the author recommends manual focus, including using non-autofocus lenses and the use of the live view features on a camera for more accurate focusing. Both film and digital sensors get their chapters with a few special instructions and lots of tables of recommended settings. A chapter is devoted to digital workflow, but it mostly seems like a review of Adobe Lightroom, and version 2 at that. Recognizing that the dynamic range of a night photograph may be greater than a daylight image, there is a review of high dynamic range photography, but while the chapter is excellent, it won’t offer much new to individuals familiar with the technique. The book finishes up with chapters on moonlight and star trails, and light painting. Several other photographers contribute to the text and excellent pictures by Keimig and others support the text.

I have to confess disappointment. The author has been a vocal proponent of long-exposure night photography. He has said “Night Photography is about the accumulation of time and light in an image- be it film or digital, and the way that the camera can record time in ways that the eye cannot see at night.” This is certainly verified by the photographs in the book where night and long exposures transform even mundane views into something wonderful. However, Keimig hardly discusses the nature of long-exposure photography and the many questions raised by it, like how one envisions what the photograph will look like when one cannot see what the effect of low light will be, or, how one recognizes what subjects will work as long-exposure night photographs?

The author states that this book is not for the beginning photographer, so perhaps he didn’t feel a need to explain these issues, but given the fact that much of the information, such as the instruction on the use of Lightroom, was at a basic level, more detail about the accumulation of light and its effect on composition was called for.

So far, I haven’t found a perfect book on night photography for the digital age. For those pursuing this genre the book will surely prove interesting and probably useful, but it is not the definitive work.

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Photographer: Jake Rajs

Publisher: Monacelli Press

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

From William Henry Jackson to Robert Adams, the American West has been a source of inspiration to photographers. Now, in Carved by Time: Landscapes of the Southwest, Jake Rajs, a photographer who has established his credentials by wonderful photographs of the northeastern part of the United States, turns his attention in the same direction.

The book concentrates on the landscapes of the Four Corners states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. The scenes photographed include places that every photographer who has wandered west of the Mississippi River knows: the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly and others.  The landscapes are red, but Rajs doesn’t forget to include what for me has become a trademark, magnificent skies. What most impressed me were the two page panoramic spreads that really helped to convey the ideas of the marriage of land and sky, although at the same time a panorama of birches seemed the next logical step beyond the birches of Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter. The pictures are devoid of humans, but the markings of man upon the landscape, in the form of photographs of the ruins of the Anasazi dwellings at Mesa Verde, Pueblo Bonito, Cocomino and other sites, and of ancient petroglyphs, are plentiful. I particularly liked the images that looked through an arcade of windows and doors, repeating patterns in this landscape of so much variation. The photographer also often provides us with several adjoining pictures of the same scene, varying either in scale or viewpoint, as if a single image could never be enough to tell us the story. Equally impressive were the snow-swathed landscapes where the white mitigated the endless red.

For me the book called out for comparisons, both to the photographer’s other work and to the work of other photographers. (I consider this call to comparison to be one of the features of art that works.) In his work on the North Fork of Long Island, Rajs created images of a more intimate nature, although many of those pictures took the wide view, and seemed to reflect his love of the place. Here one senses a certain feeling of awe and respect, and even though there is the occasional picture of foreground object set against background, it seemed to me almost as if the scope of the landscape forced Rajs to try to encompass it.

I also could not avoid comparing these photographs to those by others who work in the same geographical areas. Foremost in my mind was the work of Jack Dykinga who somehow has managed to tame this same landscape to a comprehensible size and to overcome the constant redness of things. I don’t mean to fault Rajs by this comment. Rather it is a statement of the meaning and vision that I found in his photographs, and meaning and vision is, after all, what moves photographs from snapshots to art.

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