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Book Reviews - Digital Black & White Landscape Photography by Gary Wagner - part 1 of 1

by Mike McNamee Published 01/12/2015

Amherst Media have a policy of publishing books in an identical format of 10 x 7half inches and 128 pages. This book is a good example of content that fits neatly into this constraint. After an introduction of some seven pages, it then shows 44 images as examples of their type complete with before and after processing shots and a discussion of how various effects were achieved. The format allows the author to stop at 40, 44 or 48 images, or whatever, and the reader is unaware of the agonies of editing out content! Each example image uses either one or two pages with the two -page examples having a generous whole page for the final image. Wagner uses a lot of bracketing and HDR combination usually with Photomatix and Nik Silver Efex is much in evidence along with Topaz. Photoshop gets a brief mention but appears to be used only for initial conversions in Wagner's workflow.

Such is the diversity of images shown as examples you could take any of your own creations and find a reasonably close example to act as a starting point for your post-processing attempts. The breadth of technique employed by various photographers for tuning their landscape images is huge . This book is but one approach, although it is highly effective.

Overall then this is a very pleasant read, stuffed full of good imagery and concise explanations. The only thing that is missing is any discussion of Photoshop masking and mask adjustment; a couple of the dodge and burn examples are a little crude.

Digital Black & White Landscape Photography by Gary Wagner. Soft back 128 pages. ISBN 978-1608959211 Published by Amherst Media at $34.95.

• Book Reviews - Digital Black & White Landscape Photography by Gary Wagner page 1
  

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