Mastering Black & White Photography

Beautiful examples of images in monochrome learned alot a must readFor anyone who is interested in black and white photography.

LOVE, so helpful, gives great inspiration. Even for someone that does not do photography, it helps you to understand composition, and what to look for in a good photo.

Very practical and hands-on

nice book for learning b & w photo

Ante todo decir que no es un mal libro de fotografía. Da algunos consejos útiles, el acabado está bastante bien y muestra buenas fotos. Además de que para los que no somos nativos angloparlantes no tiene una excesiva complejidad a la hora de expresarse en inglés.PERO, esperaba bastante más de un libro llamado "Mastering Black and White Photography".Es cierto que da un par de buenos consejos, pero apenas especializados en la fotografía en blanco y negro. Habla muchos temas de composición, tipos de fotografía, y edición, que me parecen bastante generalistas (y que además tampoco se tratan con demasiada profundidad... Apenas un par de páginas para los distintos tipos de fotografía). Para cualquier fotógrafo profesional, o con un algo de experiencia, son cosas sobradamente conocidas.Además, y esto no tiene porque ser un problema expresamente, se centra demasiado en la fotografía de paisajes, la cual se ve que es el fuerte del autor.En fin, no es un mal libro, pero esperaba bastante más. Ya sea por cómo se denomina o por el precio.Sólo lo recomendaría para personas que están comenzando en el mundo de la fotografía.

Excellent. Thank you John Walmsley!

I saw this book mentioned in Black and White Photography magazine and decided to order it.A really well laid out and practical guide with very useful tips to understand the world of BW photography.Intended only for digital cameras and SW.

John Walmsley is a freelance professional photographer who specialises in landscape photography - with most of the photographs in this book seemingly taken around the coastal regions of Cornwall, where he now lives. I was drawn to this book after reading a very favourable review of it in 'Black & White Photography' magazine, and I have to say - I'm rather pleased that I decided to buy it!What you receive is a soft cover publication in a somewhat unusual 250mm x 250mm square format, which runs to 175 pages and is divided into the following sections/chapters:Introduction (6 informative pages, in themselves!)Chapter 1: Equipment (Cameras/Lenses/Accessories)Chapter 2: Monochrome Essentials (Color to Black & White/Raw or JPEG?/Colored Filters/In-camera Effects)Chapter 3: Light & Exposure (Direction of Light/Quality of Light/Exposure Essentials/The Zone System/High Key/Low Key/Silhouettes)Chapter 4: Composition (The Rule of Thirds/The Rule of Odds/The Golden Ratio/The Golden Triangle/Leading Lines/Aspect Ratio/Spatial Awareness/Photographic Discord/Bipolar Pictorial Composition/Shapes & Patterns/Using a Narrow Depth of Field/Negative Space/Simplicity/Balance & Symmetry/Framing the Subject/Breaking the Rules)Chapter 5: Subjects (Landscape Photography/Portraiture/Documentary Photography/Still Life Photography/Architectural PhotographyChapter 6: Postproduction (Software/Black & White Conversions/Contrast Control/Adding Grain/Toning/Printing)*GlossaryUseful Web SitesIndexApart from the highly instructive text (which is written in a clear, jargon-free style throughout - notwithstanding the Americanised spellings), you can expect to find a prime example of John Walmsley's magnificent black and white photography adorning practically every page, always accompanied by an explanation of how each photograph came to be taken - and at what settings (Focal Length/Aperture/Shutter Speed/ISO). These images are well reproduced on a reasonable weight of paper - although the paper used here does have a consistently glossy finish to it, so that the blackest tones aren't perhaps as 'deep' as they might otherwise be. Nevertheless, there is everything you could possibly wish to know about the fundamentals of good black and white photography contained within the pages of this book and I can't imagine there can be many better guides of its type than this. Perhaps John Walmsley does occasionally tend to pitch his subject at the novice (understandable, I think), and perhaps the book might better have been titled 'Mastering DIGITAL Black & White Photography', since there's precious mention made of the 'wet' film-based alternative; furthermore, no reference is made to the latest post-production techniques - such as Focus Stacking, manipulating Orton Layers, etc... But rest assured, there are more than enough words of wisdom and advice left in this helpful volume for those more experienced in the genre who nonetheless have a yearning to hone and better their b&w technique - and that's certainly good enough for me!The cover price of this book is a stated (and confirmed) £19.99, but I bought my copy from 'Wordery' for a very reasonable £13.94 (including delivery) - which, I hope you will agree, represents a fairly decent saving. At this price, it is a thoroughly recommended buy!(* Chapter 6 - Postproduction - concerns itself almost exclusively with the Adobe Photoshop family of picture editors (Elements/Lightroom/Photoshop), although there is also some discussion of the various plugins from third-party software providers - most notably, Google-Nik's 'Silver Efex Pro'. This 'bias' might concern some readers, but I think it's reasonable enough - given that 1) This is principally a book about black & white photography, not software programmes, and 2) I suspect that the majority of Raw shooters will be using one or other of the aforementioned Adobe software packages, anyway)