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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Love the night life...with this indispensable guide. Photographing after dark is a challenge. But everyone loves the glamorous, moody results. Capture those striking images, night after starry night, with Night and Low-Light Photography. Author Jill Waterman looks at the work of 30 top professionals, examining their real-life projects as well as their tips, techniques, and unique approach. The result is a beautiful yet practical compendium of every aspect of night and low-light photography, indoors and out, black and white and color, digital and film, fine art and commercial. The moon and stars, atmospheric effects, cityscapes, industrial light, night events, night landscapes–every night effect is revealed in this lavishly illustrated one-volume resource. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Jill Waterman | | Paperback: | 196 pages | | Publisher: | Amphoto Books | | Publication Date: | August 05, 2008 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0817432418 | | Product Length: | 8.5 inches | | Product Width: | 0.5 inches | | Product Height: | 11.05 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.95 pounds | | Package Length: | 10.9 inches | | Package Width: | 8.4 inches | | Package Height: | 0.6 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.9 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 21 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 21 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
59 of 66 found the following review helpful:
 Dreadful graphical layout in mediocre book Dec 12, 2008
By Nick
This is the fourth low light photography book I have purchased and I would rank it a distant fourth. It is the first photographic book I have felt like returning. I think the allure of a forward by Michael Kenna persuaded me to buy this. I have included a few points to explain my concerns.
There are some reasonable images in the book and even a few very good ones however the average is below par; pretentiousness creeps in at a level not expected in an beginner book such as this.
A surprising amount of space is devoted to techniques for developing film. In fact more space is devoted to "How a divided developer works" than is spent on equipment for light painting. I had to check that it was a recent publication as it started to look like something from the last decade.
One of the five star reviewers is one of the book's contributers!
The learning experience pales compared to books such as those by Lee Frost (The Complete Guide to Night and Low-Light Photography)
The very important technique of High Dynamic Range is mentioned but the book demonstrates little understanding or knowledge of the field
But the worst part of the book by far is the graphical layout. I will not repeat all the comments of Conrad J. Obregon but I agree with him; I have never seen a worse layout in any book never mind a photographic book.
This is not a pleasant reading experience.
30 of 35 found the following review helpful:
 Time Warp Sep 08, 2008
By Conrad J. Obregon
Many photographers put away their cameras when the light grows dim or dark, thus forfeiting at least half the opportunity to take photographs. This book seems aimed at those photographers.
Jill Waterman has assembled a team of 30 top professionals to talk about low-light and night photography. The book begins with the usual mandatory discussion of equipment, although this chapter contains many tips on equipment use, such as stabilizing one's lens against glass if shooting through it. There are also some unusual pieces of equipment mentioned, like large portable spotlights for painting with light. Other chapters include discussions of color temperature; black and white photography, which emphasizes the role of the chemical darkroom in extending range; lighting techniques, which emphasizes light painting; weather, night time phenomena, like the aurora; and post production tools. There is a chapter that analyzes the styles of seven of the photographers and a final chapter that talks about the availability of workshops.
The difficult part of the project was probably wrangling the work and ideas of thirty different photographers into a coherent instructional body and it shows. The book lacks orderly development and approach to this kind of photography and often lapses into a kind of esoteric tip book. Occasionally there were interesting pieces of information that were never tied to anything else, like the distinctions between civil, nautical and astronomical twilight.
What I found strange was the feeling of having entered into a time warp with discussions of film, two-part developers and enlargers. A theme seems to be that film lends itself to a greater range of exposure values then digital, although that may require chemical processing to achieve. The advantages of digital photography's HDR processing to capture a wide range of light were mentioned but not in detail, or to show special considerations for the use of the technique in the dark.
The example photographs themselves were interesting, although many were too self-aware and arty to easily serve as teaching vehicles for most photographers, who probably would be interested in simpler, more direct night and low-light themes. Yet, for the experienced photographer, looking to expand his vision, these same pictures might provide some inspiration.
Although I didn't down-rate this book because of the layout and design, I hated it. Many pages are printed in black with white text, or include large blocks of black-backed white text and white-backed black text on the same page, or juxtapose black background pages with white background pages, all of which are quite jarring to the eye. As difficult are the tiny guest photographer portraits adjacent to tiny unreadable dark grey text on a black background.
Despite problems, there were useful hints here and there, such as changing the point of view when taking pictures to exclude illumination that would be too contrasty or using reflections to add drama to night shots.
Unfortunately, I have not found many recent books about low-light and night photography that are straight forward in teaching the less experienced how to become children of the night (oops-just a joke). For photographers determined to push on into the darkness, this is about as good as anything around.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 Finally a great book to learn from Feb 01, 2009
By Glynn Clapsaddle
"glynn@thestreetlamp.com"
I have gotten tired of flipping through books titled "Everything you could ever know about photography" that is only 120 pages of big fonts. THIS book does not fall into this category. It is well-written, laid out in a logical manner, and full of excellent instruction. It has examples by professional photographers on different techniques and subjects in night photography. Each example has a detailed explanation of how the shot was taken and what settings were used. I am seriously impressed with this and am beyond satisfied with my purchase. If low-light or night exposures are something you are getting into, this book is a Must-Have.
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Ambitious Book That Falls Slightly Short Mar 27, 2009
By Sage Spirit
There certainly aren't enough good books on the subject of low light/night photography, so I was pleased when I had an opportunity to read Jill Waterman's book. There are a lot of things to like about this book. The overall print quality is excellent--with a lot of excellent photo samples on every page. This alone makes the book worthwhile. Not only do we get exposed to the unique and varying style of each contributing artist (and there are many), each image is accompanied by a few nuggets of background information about the shot, along with some basic Exif data, such as camera, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc.
But my biggest issue with this book (and it is big in my opinion), is Jill Waterman's overt lack of information and insight about digital photography equipment and methodologies. Almost the entire book is dedicated to a film-based philosophy, from darkroom techniques to reciprocity failure. Having come from the film world myself, I get it. But in 2008--with the advent of highly capable low-light/high ISO cameras like the Nikon D3, this omission is just too big to ignore. It's almost as if the book were written in 2001 and published in 2008.
Undoubtedly, many contributors in this book continue to shoot using film. And film certainly offers some advantages in dynamic range over digital (which is important when trying to capture the full range of highlights and shadows in any given scene), although this gap is starting to close as sensors become more sophisticated. But ultimately, digital shooters reading Jill Waterman's book may feel that she does not go far enough to address their unique concerns and challenges. Film is still viable and is certainly here to stay, but most of the world is shooting digital nowadays--and these will be the people buying her book.
Lastly, I would have liked Jill Waterman to expand a little more on the technical aspects of nighttime image capture--especially as it relates to aperture, shutter and ISO selection. She does touch upon this with information about how to achieve a star burst effect by stopping down. And there is some information about opening up wide while increasing ISO to make star trails more plentiful and vibrant. But I would have liked to see more information about why a photographer chooses one aperture over another (or shutter/ISO) based on the night scene presented in front of them and their shooting goals. What works technically for daytime shooters does not necessarily translate into a nighttime environment.
Would I still recommend this book--well, probably. There is great reference material throughout, and many of the images are compelling and will provide good inspiration for any photographer looking to venture into the exciting and mysterious world that happens when the sun goes down. If you're looking for a definitive "how to book" on night photography, this may not be it--especially if you shoot digital. But it does contain enough good information to make the trip worthwhile--especially given the lack of good material on the subject.
5 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Exactly what I was looking for Jul 30, 2010
By Jhaysin A. Gilman
This books strength is it's full of examples of night shots on film and the settings they used to do it.
Addressing some of the lower ranked comments about the books lack of coverage on digital techniques, which there are plenty of already, I'd hope a book with "Artistic" in the title wouldn't focus on digital fads like HDR. Thats a Photoshop book you're looking for.
See all 21 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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