I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow I got onto the list for a review copy of Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers by Harold Davis. I’m not complaining in the slightest bit, just mystified. I’m a reader of Harold’s blog, and his choice of nature subjects is pretty close to mine, so I’ve always appreciated his photographs. This book is aimed a people who are trying to learn (and subsequently master) the basics of exposure, which puts it squarely in competition with Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure, which is a book that every photographer really ought to read.

So how does Davis’ work stand up when compared to Peterson’s? The basic sections are strong, and either book is fine in this respect. I think that Understanding Exposure has more of an emphasis on the creative aspects of photography, and does a better job of helping the reader understand how to achieve particular creative effects by manipulating exposure. In particular, for beginners, Peterson gives stronger guidance on specific values for apertures and shutter speeds, that can be helpful to people that don’t have much of a background.

On the other hand, I think that Davis has a much better section on understanding and using the in-camera light meters. I have the revised version of Understanding Exposure, which is updated for digital cameras, but Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers is really much more up to date for the digital age. There is a good discussion on ISO, and how to use ISO as part of the exposure control. Along with that there is an excellent discussion on noise and the use of noise in the creative process. I was glad to find some treatment of white balance. One of the easiest ways to pick out inexperienced photographer’s pictures is to look at the white balancing of the pictures. There is also a chapter on post-processing and RAW processing, a topic to which entire books are devoted, but I think it is helpful for people to understand the role of post-processing in the digital age.

As you would expect with a photography book, there are lots of pictures. As I mentioned, Davis’ preference in nature subjects is close to mine, so I really enjoyed the pictures, and there is lots of commentary accompanying each photograph. The photos in Peterson’s book are more diverse in subject matter, which is probably better from a teaching point of view.

At the end, though, I like both books. For the stage that I am at photographically, I have a slight preference for Peterson’s Understanding Exposure. I am working hard on the creative aspects of my photography, so I am in a frame of mind to be biased towards Peterson’s treatment. Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers is also a very good book, and I would have no problem recommending it to a beginning photographer. I certainly got something out of reading it (and probably could stand to read each book a few more times). The subject matter in these books is so important that one of these two books should be included in the box with every DSLR sold.

Learning to lighting has done a lot for my photography. It’s not just gaining a new appreciation for light of all kinds, but also the fact that lit photographs have cause me to think about photographs differently. I used to be a much more reactive photographer – I would just be waiting for moments to happen in order to capture them. Now, I’ve become a little more thoughtful about what I want to the end picture to look like, even in situations that are fairly fast moving. Improving my grasp of composition is definitely something that I am working on.

My favorite book on photographic composition was Photographic Composition by Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon. At least it was until I read Michael Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos.The entire first chapter is all about framing, which is the most extensive treatment that I’ve seen so far. In addition to a treatment of the usual compositional elements, there’s also a chapter on design basics, which I definitely needed some help with (and probably still do). Perhaps the best chapter of all is the last one on process, where Freeman walks through a case study or two, showing how he prepared and then composed a picture in a photojournalistic setting. Learning someone else’s thought process always seems to yield a bump up for me, much more so than just learning the straight mechanics.

Of course, with all things photographic, it’s not enough to read the book and understand it. The trick is putting it all into practice.

I haven’t been taking as many photographs as I would like recently. One thing I have managed to find some time for is some new photography books. Several of the photography blogs that I read have been talking up Joe McNally’s book “The Moment It Clicks”. McNally is a very accomplished magazine photographer, and the book is an accumulation of his experience in 30 years of shooting. There are over 100 little section in the book. Each section begins with a short quote/quip, and is accompanied by a full page photograph along with a full page explanation of the lesson, and often times an explanation of exemplar photograph.

Several other reviewers, including David Hobby, reported getting the book and then staying up way too late reading it cover to cover. I was sorely tempted to, but there was just too much information to do that. There’s an enormous amount of content and when I finished I was grateful for all the experience that I had just run by my eyeballs and brain. This is a book for working shooters, and if you don’t put the stuff to work, you won’t really get the value out of the book. The challenge for me, and I suspect many others, will be translating these short pithy lessons into a part of our regular photographic practice. Since we’re reading a condensation of 30 years of Joe McNally’s life, there’s no telling how long that will take. But at least now we have something that we can turn to periodically to remind us.

Even better, McNally has started a blog that picks up where the book left off.

Blog: subscribed. Book: highly recommended.