The Complete Guide to Night & Lowlight Photography (A Lark Photography Book)
The Complete Guide to Night & Lowlight Photography (A Lark Photography Book)
Customer Review: Yet another disappointing Night Photography book
I really, truly wanted to love this book. I wanted to recommend it to my students, and I wanted it to finally be a useful Night Photography textbook. Unfortunately, it falls tremendously short of its potential on so many levels. As someone who has photographed at night for over 20 years, and taught Night Photography classes and workshops for 10 years, I feel qualified to make this judgement. The first and most obvious shortcoming is in the lack of inspiring, or even good Night Photographs. Most of the examples included are not only NOT night or low light images, but they are simply illustrations for the page, and not particularly good or interesting photographs. What a way to lose your audience in the first chapter.
To be fair, there is plenty of useful technical information, and it is generally well organized. Unfortunately, most of the information presented is not really specific to the topic of the book. In addition, the title and summary do not indicate that this is a digital only book, and it most definitely is. Night Photography is one of the few areas where film still has some advantages over digital, and film based photography is completely excluded. This is probably a relatively minor point as digital photography is so dominant today.
Probably the greatest flaw of this book is that it does not embrace Night Photography for what it is. The author seems to have no grasp whatsoever of what it is that makes Night Photography special. In a nutshell, 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. Rather than show readers how to take advantage of the magic possible with long exposures and dramatic mixed lighting sources found at night, Freeman instructs the reader how to overcome these “challenges”. Night photography is unpredictable and to a certain extent uncontrollable, and rather than embrace these things that make it unique, Freeman does everything he can to help his reader eliminate any and all risks. Night photography that “stays inside the lines” is boring. It is only by breaking the rules that Night Photographers create really exciting images, and there isn’t more than a couple in this entire book.
There are at least a dozen books on the market supposedly about Night and low light photography, and they pretty much all focus on Christmas lights, neon signs, fireworks, theatre or sporting events at night. This is not Night Photography, but simply how to extend daytime shooting methods into low light situations. Michael Freeman’s disappointing book is just another one added to the pile. To date, Andrew Sanderson’s “Night Photography” is the best text published on the subject, but it is almost entirely a black and white film book, and therefore of limited use in today’s digital world.
Jill Waterman’s new book, “Night and Low Light Photography, Professional Techniques from Experts for Artistic and Commercial Success” is due out in August of 2008, and should prove to be much better than anything released on the topic to date. (disclaimer: I am a contributor to Jill’s book)
Tags: Arts and Photography book, Arts book, Cheap Photography book, Photography book, Cheap Arts book, Art photography book
