Photography

There are times I pick out a book not because I understand it, but because I want to evaluate it as a student of the subject. Not being a photographer of any particular skill, and knowing just enough about Ansel Adams to know that his Zone System is a pretty important part of a photographer’s education, I figured I’d grab this one.

Well, it’s certainly a stunningly beautiful book. Frye is a top-notch landscape photographer, and the bulk of both his and the other artists in the book’s pictures are taken in California, particularly in the Yosemite. The Zone System gets a brief rundown (the zones are essentially approximate light/darkness values, numbered 1 to 11), and is applied to the best of the author’s ability to the new digital world. But there is also extensive attention paid to post-production (the “digital darkroom”, as the book puts it), including information on retouching, tweaking colors, and data handling.

Here’s where we get to a bit of a problem though. It’s hard to really control your shooting with a point-and-shoot camera, but that’s what your average beginner is probably going to start off with. In that situation, post-production becomes much more important, since it’s only in the $80-$150 range that the digital point-and-shooter is going to start to get much of any control at all over the process, and lower than that (children’s cameras, keychain cameras, and the like) you may as well be heading into Lomography territory, where the rules are completely different and the found object trumps all other artistic considerations. For a photographer who doesn’t have a lightmeter or the fine-grained control of a digital SLR, this book won’t be useless, but it will definitely be limited largely to post-processing the image in Photoshop, Aperture, and similar programs. As I mentioned years ago in my review of the first edition of Michael Rubin’s Little Digital Video Book, this is a risky thing to do because it short-shrifts artists working on a shoestring, and I consider it a serious flaw. But there’s still a lot to be learned from it.
Rating: 4 / 5

This book is part instructional guide on how to photograph landscapes using the same system used by legendary photographer Ansel Adams and part showcase of Adams’ and the author’s own breathtaking work. As such, it will be on my shelves for years to come (except when I put in on my coffee table as a conversational piece).

This said: I would have preferred more of a structured tutorial approach that would perhaps have used the same image sets when illustrating the photographic principles it discusses instead of using dozens of different ones. I tend to learn better from a book with such an organization.

Another minor criticism is the type-face is very small, and people some people might find it a bit difficult to read. Those are minor knocks overall. Well recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5

Next to the iconic images of the Civil War by Matthew Brady, Ansel Adams is by far one of the most well known photographers of all time. His stark, chilling black and white, large scale photos of Yellowstone and other National Parks have become the standard bearer for what all landscape photographers are to aim for. Adams used lengthy exposures and large format cameras – his resulting prints were all contact prints. If you see an 8×10 photo by Adams, the negative was 8×10. How does one translate this effect into the modern cameras of today? Adams passed in 1984, but were he alive for the digital age, this is perhaps the book he would have written.

Author Michael Frye takes you, the modern-day digital photographer, through the footsteps of Ansel Adams, through the filter of the digital age. Not only are there photos by Ansel Adams, but also far more by the author – before and after photos of RAW images, then processed RAW. He goes over Adams’ famous Zone system, but goes well beyond the limitations of film with software enhancements that are available to today’s hobbyist and professional.

Frye does not obsess over any software program in particular. Whether he used Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom, or one of hundreds of other software titles available for PC and Mac, is not the focus of this ultimate in landscape textbooks. While I don’t know if the author intended this to be a textbook or not – if I were to teach a class in landscape photography, this would be the textbook. Frye explains how (boosting saturation, tweaking levels, etc.) he accomplished the “after” in the before/after examples via software in very simple, easy-to-follow terms that anyone with any software package could follow. This is not a step-by-step on how to use software – it’s a step-by-step on how to achieve amazing landscape imagery through the viewfinder to final product.

Whether he is dealing with camera position, repeating patterns, long vs. short lenses, vantage points or even the weather, no stone is left unturned here in opening your eyes and your creative spirit on how to capture with the camera what you see in your mind’s eye. You may see a phenomenal site that you know, like Ansel Adams stated, “is an inevitable photograph,” but you can take the photo and examine it later only to sigh, “well, you just had to be there – it was more impressive in person.” While Frye’s photos are predominantly color, as opposed to Adams’ famous black and white prints, the master touch is still evident. There is definitely a different emotion and energy coming from a black and white image than from a color one- but Frye’s images are still stunning. An untrained eye would easily turn the same exact scene photographed by the author into a boring snapshot.

By reading this book, studying the techniques and meditating on them so you can be ready the next time you have an amazing vista in front of you, you too can produce memorable landscapes. The vast majority of landscape photos taken by amateurs are boring, flat images with no soul… even though the camera does an effective job of documenting how light reflects off the objects the photographer is shooting. Becoming a student of these techniques can transform the average, ho-hum landscape into a compelling image that draws the viewer in.

This is truly one of the best books on the subject I have encountered. The subjects are similar to Adams’ subjects – stunning vistas. I’d enjoy seeing a sequel to this book with urban landscapes, focusing on the light challenges of urban canyons, varying, unnatural textures, etc.
Rating: 5 / 5