Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers

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 include:

• Camera, lenses, and equipment
• Understanding exposure and measuring light
• Relationship of aperture to shutter speed and ISO
• Working with depth of field
• Natural lighting, studio lighting, and the use of flash
• Light and color temperature
• Working with white balance
• Photographing at dawn or dusk
• Photography at night
• Capturing motion
• Telling a story with your image
• Capturing people, places, and things
• Setting up a digital workflow
• RAW processing and double RAW processing
• Adjusting exposure and reducing noise
• Black & white photography
• And much more

This fascinating book teaches enthusiasts how to apply the techniques and principles of classic photography to today's digital reality — and helps them to make great images in the process. Harold Davis introduces general concepts of digital photography, with an emphasis on understanding light and exposure: crucial concepts that must be understood and mastered to take great photographs.

Daniel Lombardo - Library Journal

Because the art and craft of photography have changed so radically in recent digital years, the holistic art of photography is in danger of being lost. Fine art photographer Davis, who considers today's photographer part traditional photographer and part digital artist, argues that a great photograph starts with the photographer's understanding of light and proceeds with a creative control of exposure. He describes what makes up an exposure-aperture, shutter speed, and sensitivity-and explains both when to change each of these settings and what the likely impact will be. His compelling images of flowers, bridges, cliffs at sunrise, and cities at night illustrate each aspect of his ideas, showing how light can be captured and manipulated to stunning effect. Highly recommended for fine art photographers; commercial photographers will benefit from Jack Neubart's Location Lighting Solutions, with its emphasis on advertising photography.

Harold Davis is an author, photographer, and expert technologist. Harold's photographs have been widely published, exhibited, and collected. Many of Harold's fine art photography posters are well known, including some recent alternatively processed digital flower images published by New York Graphic Society.

Harold is the author of more than twenty books, and has written (and illustrated with his photographs) Digital Photography: Digital Field Guide (Wiley), The Photographer's Guide to Yosemite and the High Sierra (Countrymen/W.W.Norton), 100 Views of the Golden Gate (Wilderness Press). He is the lead author of a new series of books about digital photography from O'Reilly Digital Media. In addition, Harold has three popular websites (www.digitalfieldguide.com), (www.photoblog2.com), and (www.digitalnight.us) and blogs regularly for O'Reilly Media, Inc.