How Do I Photograph a Sunset by Chris Gatcum
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“How do we learn? We learn by asking questions. But what if we don’t know what questions we should be asking?”
This quote from the back cover of “How Do I Photograph a Sunset?” highlights what’s wrong with this book.
This is a tip book. It takes the form of questions and answers about photography. It is divided into five sections that discuss equipment, settings, composition, genre practice and post-processing. It takes the form of questions about photography and brief answers. It seems to be aimed mostly at beginners
Pedagogically, I have found that photographic instruction best proceeds in an organized matter from the most basic matters to more complex matters. That means, for example, that one must learn about light and the way it affects the media it lands on in a camera and how you control the amount of light that lands on that media by the combination of aperture, length of exposure and I.S.O. (the amount by which the captured light is amplified). From there one can learn the effect of varying each of these to get the picture one wants.
I suppose it is possible to develop a question and answer book that would meet this criteria. Generally it is simpler and clearer to just to write a text. In any case this book doesn’t develop the teaching points. Instead it looks like a bunch of random questions were thrown together and separated into five broad categories without further thought. The information is accurate but without much depth to be truly useful.
The camera in the modern cell phone can be used to capture images easily. If one wants further control over the image, one should use a more complex camera, and even setting it on full automatic requires some training to get the most out of that mode. Some serious photographers spend their lives learning new lessons. What serious photographers need is insight, not random peeks, which is what this book provides.