One man's meat is another's poison I suppose. Just shows how 'subjective' () peoples preferences can be.
Never really got much from Lee Frost's books personally, but the Charlie Waite one I mentioned helped me to look at prospective images much more carefully and look after the little things that are easily overlooked, but smack you in the face when you get back to the computer later.
Just out of interest Parky, do you have any inkling where you are going wrong or is it a mystery? Is it technical problems, like the overexposed skies, or composition?
As an aside, I bought Andy Rouse's new book the other day and for anyone interested in wildlife photography, it really is blindingly good so far.
i went for the cokin z-pro nd grad pack. more money than sense as usual and hoping that it may reduce some vignetting...but then i may be wrong. ho hum.
having taken my 12-24 lens for an outing i realise that you need to adopt a different mindset to pictures. which i find find rather interesting. i', slowly but surely learning a bit more with each outing and i find lightroom very good to see where i could have done things diffferently.
richard, i see where you're coming form but for a "learner" i don't think the charlie waite book is very helpful rather than me being subjective as it contains virtually nothing to help someone in my position whereas the lee frosts books contain lots and lots of useful and interesting information on technique. however, when i have gained more experience the charlie wait book will be revisited and i'm sure i will find more in it as i "leave" the lee frost books behind.
so far, the things i tend to get wrong is not having filters. i bracket like crazy selecting excellent foreground with burnt out sky and excellent sky with too dark a foreground. with my level of experience (of taking the picture in the first place and acquiring a modicum of basic skill) i think photoshop cannot provide the same results as a proper filter. the end blending/gradients just don't look right and introduce too much noise (grain?). i can do a pretty reasonable blend/gradient but the sky always looks "fake" e.g. far too much noise compared to the ground and this just irritates me because i know the image could be so much better.
whilst my pics are only on the pc at present, i would like to print some at some stage and not be annoyed by niggling things that most people probably wouldn't even notice.
when looking at the pro's pictures, if nothing but to inspire oneself, there is invariably a balance and sense of purpose to the shot (albeit i think some suck because they're not my cup of tea). lots of work, practice and perseverence to look forward to.
i am trying not to let digital make me lazy by just taking loads of pics and just picking one and playing with it for ages in photoshop. i would like to get enough basic skill to get the shot right in just a few takes with minimal photoshop interefence. all the pros grew up with film where skill in exposure etc. was paramount because it had to right.
when i have a wide lens/filter outing i'll be able to see if the latter were worth my investment.
just as a bit of background. i did slr black and white pictures around 25 years ago, winding, developing and printing my own film (b&w coz it the cheapest and i even won a couple of prizes in our photography club!) and much of what i'm doing now is getting back up to speed and trying to cope with the technology advances.
I think it really depends where you think you need to improve though. I certainly haven't been taking pics for years and so don't consider myself to be much of an authority, but I know what's helped along the way and what's not.
Even as a film tog I never bothered to properly learn about reciprocity failure or hyper-focal focusing and such things and it's never really caused me any issues.
A certain level of technical competence is required for sure, but for me composition has always been the bigger issue, so I've tended to concentrate on trying to improve my attention to detail, vision, innovation etc. Consequently, I've tended to prefer books that explain why a picture was taken in a certain way, rather than how it was taken. Knowing that a shot was taken at 24mm, f8, 1/125th with a 0.6 Nd grad is unlikely to help me achieve similar results, yet people seem to be obsessed with knowing these details and you read this in amazon reviews all the time.
Even if you pickup just the odd nugget from a book though, it could still be a valuable nugget. I have piles of photography books and have never regretted buying any of them, though I think a relative bought me one by John Hedgecoe once, which ensured I never wasted good money on any of his books again...
I think you can learn a lot more from sites like www.photo.net than books, you will get lots of good advice about what you are doing wrong and way's to improve your photography.
Another, more expensive route to learning, would be to have a photo holiday, either here or abroad. There are a few pro's doing this now including Lee Frost - usually advertised in the photography magazines / websites.
richard g - i agree with you almost entirely. i wish to acquire more technical ability and i feel that the lee frost books provide the information that will enable me to take better pics in due course. just odd nuggets here and there like what to expose on, how much compensation etc. i'm sure i would have eventually worked all this out for myself but it is nice to have a map with a big X on it to know where to start so i can bracket from closer to the "right" point rather than it being haphazard guess. i've always had a natural curiosity about how and why. experience will hone this. i used to be able to guess quite accurately the exposure by eye but this "skill" has been lost over time.
reciprocity failure - never heard of it until i read the books and further investigation reveals it doesn't affect digital so i ignore all comments about it. hyper-focal wotsit - i always knew that as depth of field without the fancy explanations.
i look at a photo and either like it or i don't. i couldn't give a fig about lens, speed etc.
i find many of the "pro" pics are not nice to my eyes being time warped (like orange loons or the bloody awful magenta filter) or have now just become cliches (like fuzzy moving water just because it's there). i also find many stunning.
my main failings are exposure but the books have provided me with useful info as to what to actually expose for. now it's just getting used to the lense and what they will do for what i want to take. i don't find composition a problem as this is still very strong from my old slr days - albeit with a rather eclectic almost perverse twist.
i don't have the time for taking pics at the correct time of day so i try to make the best of when i can. but having the available time will come at some point.
richard gale - indeed the internet is a great resource but isn't appropriate for ablution browsing or when i'm forced to have some rubbish on the tv that the Angel wishes to improve her mind with. (glances over shoulder)
i would imagine a photo holiday is like going on a cookery course, it's nice but you don't actually learn very much because your imagination is taken away from you.
95% of landscape photography is about getting the right light, if you are not there for that you wasting your time!!!!!!!. I agree that books are the thing for ablution browsing but if you really want to improve your image making having your peers critique your work is the best way to learn and improve.
taking a pretty landscape picture is about the light. but that light, although likely, isn't necessarily at dawn and/or dusk.
i'm a stubborn git and i've never been put off by "you don't wanna do it like that" as the often well meant advice may welll be overly focussed - if i could make the very dubious connection between photos and cooking. whatever the light, it's still good for practising, experimenting and general messing about to see what may or not work.
Many people marvel at the photo's of the best landscape togs because they see, in the image, something they have never seen for themselves, because too many people don't get off their lardy arses and go out at dawn or dusk!
However, to dismiss all pictures taken during normal daylight hours because "the lighting is too flat" or "sunshine incoming at 1 o'clock" and other such comments you hear trotted out is just narrow minded imho. This is how the vast majority of people see landscapes in real life, so they are perfectly valid, if not more so than the jaw dropping shots taken at 3.30am, when everyone else is safely tucked up in bed.
You are quiet right as with every thing its down to personal taste, to me images taken in the harsh midday sun are just snapshots and hold little magic of cause there are exceptions like when you have a dark broken sky with god rays shining through.I think the techniques you use are very different when shooting with lower light levels and greater dynamic range of dusk and dawn.
the current problem with dawn and dusk is public transport, domestic harmony and work.
i'm working on the Angel about the work aspect when i'll have time for overnighters as she travels quite a bit so i won't be missed from home. until then i'll practice technique.
i been out on a number of occassions with cloud and shafts of sunlight which has made the view excellent. just never been able to capture the moments.
) peoples preferences can be.
