Light & Shadow: The Art of Landscape Photography

by Fran Halsall

From the inside flap:

This is a book that approaches not only technicalities but also ways of seeing, making it an invaluable and accessible guide for anyone who wishes to take landscape photographs or who is interested in the mysterious distinction between a decent image and an amazing one.

Halsall's clearly articulated commentaries on her own photographs, divided into three sections, Light, Form, and Time - reveal her sensitivity to nature, attention to detail, boundless patience, and intelligent analysis.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasn't what I was expecting it to be. I thought it was going to be instructional and give you a good idea of how to take better photos. This book offered some advice, but it was mostly showing photographs the author took, and then offering a short explanation of why she took the photograph the way that she did. Sometimes this information seemed useful, but oftentimes it was not. There were often portions of the book where the author would talk about the theory behind aspects of photography. Unfortunately, most of this information is of little use to a person trying to learn to take quality photos. For example, on the topic of light, the author describes light on a bright day to be 5000-6000 degrees kelvin. Why would this information be helpful to me? I can think of no reason why knowing that would make me be able to take better photos. Much of the instructional part of the book has information like that. The latter half of the book is much better in that regard. I learned a few things, but realized about halfway through I got almost nothing out of reading the descriptions to the pictures. With all that, the author is an extremely talented photographer and the pictures were stunning.

[Roy McDine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing - expected much more technical information, rather than a couple of pages of EXIF data at the back of the book.