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Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places: (Beginners Guide, Landscape Photography, Street Photography)
£10.90£12.30 (-11%)
No clichés. No cheese. No camera-club jargon.
From the author of the best-selling ‘Read This’ series, this introduction covers all aspects of photographing places, including landscapes, cityscapes, architecture and interiors.
Whatever your camera, whatever your interest, whatever your level, this indispensable guide gives you all the essential techniques and demystifies the work of acclaimed photographers.
Packed with practical tips and iconic images, this accessible book will arm you with the know-how you need to take meaningful pictures of the places that matter to you most.
Featuring 50 master photographers, including Alec Soth, Martin Parr, Robert Adams, Todd Hido, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Julius Shulman, Rinko Kawauchi, Thomas Ruff, Tim Hetherington and Joel Sternfeld.
Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places is part of the internationally-bestselling ‘Read This’ series, which has sold over half-a-million books worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages.
Coming soon: Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing People by Selwyn Leamy (September 2019)
More titles in the ‘Read This’ series:
Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs by Henry Carroll (9781780673356)
Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll (9781780676241)
Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places by Henry Carroll (9781780679051)
Use This if You Want to Take Great Photographs: A Photo Journal by Henry Carroll (9781780678887)
Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786270542)
Use This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786274052)
Read This if You Want to Be a Great Writer by Ross Raisin (9781786271976)
Read This if You Want to Be Instagram Famous edited by Henry Carroll (9781780679679)
Read more
Additional information
| Publisher | Illustrated edition (20 Feb. 2017), Laurence King Publishing |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 128 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 178067905X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1780679051 |
| Dimensions | 14.61 x 1.65 x 19.94 cm |
by Shane White
A good little book that covers the basics of photographing places such as cities, landscapes.
The author includes lots of useful explanations of technical terms such as aperture, RAW, aspect ratio etc. etc. and the photographs he uses as examples are always excellent.
The one thing that lets this book down are the occasional unnecessary negative comments, such as on page 17 where the author tells us that the United States is the world’s second-largest polluter and that the oil refinery in the photo “stands proud, unashamed of its environmental impact” and page 25: “The subject’s smallness… becomes a potent metaphor for a political system that prefers to ostracise citizens rather than rehabilitate them”.
Other than these minor quibbles, the book is very good.
by Trish Cressie
Bought as a gift for a family member who is a keen photographer but doesn’t often take photos of places. He was impressed and will use it for reference. It reads well too.
by Amazon Customer
Title and description implies it’s going to be focused on techniques.
Most of book is selected examples of landscape photography, with some accompanying text. Then a few (~10) pages on basic camera operation (explainign what apertures and depth of field are, etc.).
by Matt H
Well written and put together, gives a series of examples of different techniques along with example photographs. The examples are clear and concise and it made me think about my practices as a photographer.
by Ross Samson
For a fiver, it is hard to think of a better bargain in the world of photographic books.
First off, the images are first class. Some foolish reviewers have claimed that there are plenty of dull snaps in the book. These people presumably want that conventional Wow Factor, great big red skies, majestic mountains, etcetera. Images that make you take notice… but for little more than ten seconds. This book has 50 images by famous photographers. Some of them are too avant garde for most amateurs. Harry Gruyaert, Massimo Vitali, Rut Blees Luxembourg, and Todd Hido spring to mind as greats that are probably just under the radar of most amateur photographers. But most of the others are well out of the list of usual suspects. I have seen no more than a quarter of these images before and I have over 100 books on photography!!!
The “technical tangent” pages are aimed at beginners who are no longer beginners. Large apertures for shallow depth of field and such like. If you are a complete beginner, the information is probably too terse to be useful. If you already know about such stuff, you won’t need to be reminded. I reckon the publishers insisted on it to make the book look more useful.
The text beside each image, on the other hand, offers exciting ideas. Instead of dull technical “beginner” stuff like be careful not to let the blacks “block up” because you lose details or don’t overexpose because “burnt-out areas lose all their information”, this book embraces artistic extremes. Underexposed, blocked-up blacks are acceptable, creating a sense of unease, operating as a metaphor for uncertainty. How about shooting at twilight, not because that is the pretty light, but for an ominous sensation?
The book is useless if you operate strictly on the Wow level. For that there are dozens upon dozens of other books.
by Paul
Great book for reading over to see some nice tricks and tips. Also a great coffee table book
by Amin
What constitutes a “great” photo is subjective, of course, but I only find some of the photos in here to be “great”. At least by that I mean they make me stop and look at them.
Quite a few images seem to have no particular focus, or merit and here’s the problem. The text accompanying those photos uses fancy phrases and purple prose to try to make them into something they are not.
If an image stops me in its tracks, I don’t need words to tell me I like it. If the image has to have words for anyone to “understand” why it’s worth including, sorry but I’m not convinced.
It does seem to me that the writing is aiming for erudition that simply isn’t necessary. Quite honestly, some of it comes across as pompous. I’ll keep this because I do like some of the images – shame it’s not the best print quality I’ve ever seen and even more of a shame that the images are pretty small. It would have been nice to have them bigger.
by sally d
Well written & easy to dip in and out of