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Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers

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You may be passionate about photography, and own a digital SLR with perhaps more advanced equipment as well. But do the photographs you take with this powerful equipment come out as well as you'd like?With this fascinating and beautifully illustrated book, you learn how to apply the techniques and principles of classic photography so you can make great images with today's digital equipment. Harold Davis, author and renowned fine art photographer, puts the focus in Practical Artistry on light and exposure, two crucial concepts you need to understand and master if you are to truly capture the images you see.Davis presents a generous number of his own images in each chapter, complete with technical information and an explanation of what he was trying to achieve. These striking photographs not only illustrate the lesson at hand, but also serve as inspiration for your own efforts. Browsing the photographs alone will tell you a lot.Topics covered in this book lenses, and equipmentUnderstanding exposure and measuring lightRelationship of aperture to shutter speed and ISOWorking with depth of fieldNatural lighting, studio lighting, and the use of flashLight and color temperatureWorking with white balancePhotographing at dawn or duskPhotography at nightCapturing motionTelling a story with your imageCapturing people, places, and thingsSetting up a digital workflowRAW processing and double RAW processingAdjusting exposure and reducing noiseBlack & white photographyAnd much moreConcise and to the point, Practical Artistry clearly demonstrates that photography, essentially, is writing with light, and that the type of images you produce depend on the many choices you have for using that skill. Harold Davis gives you an array of choices in full living color.

176 pages, ebook

First published April 2, 2008

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About the author

Harold Davis

163 books14 followers
Harold Davis is widely recognized as a leading contemporary photographer and artist. He is also the author of more than 30 books, including Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography from Amphoto/Random House and Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis which is published by Focal Press, and has been called "one of the most beautiful books ever created."

Harold Davis believes that advances in the technology and craft of digital photography have created an entirely new art form. Trained as a classical photographer and painter, his photographic images are made using special HDR (High Dynamic Range) capture techniques that extend the range of visual information beyond what the eye can normally see.

Davis creates and processes his images using wide-gamut and alternative digital methods that he has invented. His techniques combine the craft of photography with the skills of a painter.

Photographic adventures and assignments have taken him across the Brooks Range, the northernmost mountains in Alaska. He has photographed the World Trade Towers, hanging out of a small plane, followed in the footsteps of Seneca Ray Stoddard, a 19th-century photographer of the Adirondacks, and created human interest photo stories about the residents of Love Canal, an environmental disaster area.

Harold is well-known for his night photography and experimental ultra-long exposure techniques, use of vibrant, saturated colors in landscape compositions, and beautiful creative floral imagery.

He makes his over-sized original prints on unusual substrates such as pearlized metallic and washi rice papers. Davis states, "I believe that nothing like my prints has ever been seen before. They simply could not have been created until recently. I've been able to innovate in a domain where many techniques and crafts have come together for the first time. My prints are made meticulously, and have a 200-year archival rating for ink and paper if they are handled properly.

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