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Photography Essentials Waiting For The Light (Photography Essentials) | 
 enlarge | Author: David Noton
Publisher: David & Charles
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $16.19
You Save: $8.80 (35%)
New (18) Used (5) from $14.91
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 226667
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 10.2 x 9.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 0715328190
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.36092
EAN: 9780715328194
ASIN: 0715328190
Publication Date: March 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
Waiting for the Light is a breathtaking visual celebration of David Noton's work to date as one of the world's finest landscape photographers. A long-awaited exploration of David's images, this book showcases the very best from his extensive global portfolio, with photographs from every continent. Accompanying text places an emphasis on his use of light, and his ability to capture the essence of a place through outstanding landscape photography. David offers amateurs and professionals inspirational and practical advice on how to achieve this in their own work. The book also includes an invaluable chapter exploring the incorporation digital techniques. Beautifully displayed images combined with explanatory captions and practical, revealing text, make this an indespensable must-have for any photographer.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great Pictures Need Book Design Help April 17, 2008
I'm mellowing. It used to be that any time I saw a photographer's portfolio disguised as an instruction manual to appeal to a larger audience, I would call foul. But lately, I've begun to believe that any opportunity for a good photographer to get his work in print deserves an appraisal of his work, regardless of the box that his publisher has forced the work into.
Actually this wasn't a hard position to take with "Waiting for the Light." The claims for instruction are minimal, and the photographs are so good that the book deserves examination strictly as a portfolio of Noton's work. The photographer's forte is the panoramic landscape image, shot with a 617 camera that creates the 6:17 ratio. The individual pictures are glorious with an extreme range of light that made me wonder if these pictures hadn't been processed with High Dynamic Range in Photoshop, but Noton claims that they are the result of waiting for just the right light for the scene he visualized, even if it might mean waiting for a week for just that light (although he does acknowledge some manipulation in Photoshop). There is nothing else in the text about how he got that look, other then to occasionally use a neutral density filter to stretch out the shutter speed to minutes, or sometimes add a split neutral density filter. Perhaps it is the changing light over an eight minute exposure that creates the glow. Certainly, it would be worth trying these long exposures to see if that would yield such striking images.
The book also includes a fair share of 35mm exposures of people, city streets and the like which are also quite striking, but in an age where we are regularly exposed to images from the most remote parts of the world, these do not have the impact of the light in the panoramas.
Unfortunately the pictures are presented on almost square pages of 24 by 26 centimeters. If ever a set of pictures called for a higher ratio shaped page, these demanded it. I wanted to see the pictures larger, without two on a page, or so much space above and below a panorama. And I was certainly disappointed to see a panorama stretched across a centerfold.
Good pictures do not necessarily make a good book, and here I objected to the rhetoric of the presentation, that is, the way that the order and juxtaposition of images adds to our understanding of what is being presented. Here the pictures were presented in an order that seemed to evolve out of an organization based on instruction that added nothing to our understanding rather then a synergistic presentation. Perhaps it would be useful for the publisher's design staff to study the books of Jack Dykinga or Art Wolfe.
When it comes to instruction, one theme resounds throughout the book. Wait for the light! There are a lot of other tips sprinkled throughout the book, but not in any fashion that would allow photographers to organize them into a coherent approach to capturing images. Still, there probably is an instructional benefit from studying Noton's photographs carefully and analyzing what makes them so good. There is a final mandatory chapter on mechanics, but it mostly discusses Noton's transition from film to digital and that's a ship which has long since sailed. I almost cried when the author said that Levels and Curves are important to control light but were beyond the remit of this book.
Where does that leave one? Noton's pictures are eye-stoppers that you shouldn't miss. But you shouldn't expect too much of the presentation.
Worth the wait April 7, 2008
The book is titled "Waiting For The Light", well I had to wait sometime for mine to be delivered for what appeared to be several unrelated delays! Well it was "worth the wait" - some superb use of lighting conditions as the title suggests. The book lives up to David Noton's reputation as a superb landscape photographer. Some excellent images in this volume which can only serve as great inspritaion to any landscape photographer. Print quality is very good. As with many photography books these days it is softbacked - is this purley due to cost I wonder?
 Great Book April 7, 2008
Very enjoyable and well written book by a gifted landscape and travel photographer. Ive seen and read alot of David Noton material in various magazines and on his website so I was very keen to get his book as soon as it came out.
I havent been disappointed. Nice photography, great coverage of subjects and fairly well printed. I would recommend this to anyone into landscape and travel photography of all levels of knowledge.
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