Bryan Peterson's Field Guide to Understanding Composition

didier: I strongly recommend Bryan's book on understanding photography composition
this book explains errors in composition and how to fix it
a best in class book on photography composition
for recreational photographers but helpful for pros.

France on Aug 28, 2021

Samuel G.: Ayant déjà "Understanding Photography" du même auteur, j'ai trouvé ce livre intéressant pour l'approfondissement qu'il apporte. Il y a de la redite, mais le contenu est intéressant avec de nouvelles illustrations qui me plaisent toujours autant. A 12 euros livraison incluse, un must.

France on May 28, 2021

R. Eason: I have a few books by Bryan Peterson. His book on flash is pretty good. But the longer I take pictures and the more I learn about the tech behind cameras the less enamored I am with his information. Some of it is questionable and some of it is just plain old bad advice. In this book he repeatedly suggests using f16 or f22 which would be the smallest aperture on the lens. Lenses exhibit their worst behaviors at these apertures. He then refers to f11 as a “who cares” aperture. This is generally the sweet spot for lenses and is incredibly useful for everything from studio shots to landscapes to architecture and cityscapes.
Bad information aside - many of the photos simply aren’t compelling. I don’t think they are technically bad (though I might argue a few are). But most are just not appealing. They are the kind of photos you scroll past on 500px and maybe mutter something about “it’s okay”.
The final straw on this one is the rants against cropping and getting things right in camera. Having spent years in the darkroom toiling over negatives trying to get compelling prints by dodging and burning and cropping and masking - often for hours per print - I can only say...

United States on May 15, 2020

Michel F: Of my many books on photography, this is certainly one of my top 5 must have books. You have to read it often to assimilate all the useful content and put it to good use but it is time well invested. The information here will definitely boost your artistic and photographic level in very little time. It doesn't matter if you are a beginner or pro. Anybody can profit by reading this book. Peterson's writing style is easy to understand. He is a great teacher. The many photographs are perfect examples of what he explains in writing. I have the first and latest version of hos book learning to see creatively and it is a great book but in my opinion this one is even better. If I had to choose only one, it would be an easy pick.

Canada on Jun 30, 2016

John McQuitty: I liked this book. I like Bryan's writing style, although I do think in this book it has a bit more of an "edge" than in some of his previous books. However, he always writes in a style that is easy to remember. I found "two steps closer" a refreshing way to remember to fill the frame, for instance, and who would have thought of "crying babies" for background distractions?

I have always thought of myself as a "fill the frame" photographer - sometimes too much filling the frame to the detriment of showing the environment. However reading this book that I had gotten lazy and was NOT filling the frame so much anymore - a good mental kick in the butt. I had my wife look at some of my pictures - old and new - and she really gravitated to the ones that "filled the frame." I shall also watch out for "crying babies" in the backgroun when setting up a shot.

The last thing I immediately recognized was that I had gotten away from what i used to call "zone focusing." I used to use it all the time to set an area of acceptable focus. I have gotten away from that with newer lenses that only have a distance scale and not a DOF scale as the old manual ones had. However, Bryan reminds...

United States on Jun 16, 2015

A. Neville: I have invested in almost all of Bryan Peterson's photography books; however, this one has fallen a little short of my expectations because of some glaring errors on pages 169, 182, 200, and 212. Each of these errors are the same, the lens described in his story does not match the lens he used in the photo information at the end of the story. For example, page 169, Bryan stated, "With my 24-85mm lens mounted on a tripod," whereas the lens description at the bottom of the story states he used at 70-300mm lens. It leaves me wondering what he actually used. On page 200, Bryan wrote, "with my 16-35mm lens at the moderate wide-angle choice of 35mm. Before moving on, I repositioned the camera to the vertical position and then zoomed to 85 mm." I may be new to photography but, how is that possible with a 35mm lens? Indeed, in the two picture comparison it is obvious that he zoomed in on the second picture; however, glancing down to the photo description confirmed that he did use a 16-35mm lens. So, how did he manage to zoom to 85mm? I'm not going to go into detail on all of the errors I noticed, suffice it to say that these errors left me feeling like I couldn't trust the information I...

Canada on Dec 15, 2012

P. Mourtos: Down to earth advice presented in a comprehensive intuitive manner. Easy to follow examples and the highlight of all his books he shows the results of his advise with the image right there for you to examine.He talks about photography and he shows the examples in photographs with the explanation.
Well spend time and money for this book.
peter

Canada on Dec 04, 2012

BostonAaron: Many years ago Kodak published a book "How to make good pictures" which implied that enjoyable photos just don't happen, they are created. In this small book Bryan Peterson will show you how he does it, with some tricks of the trade. (If you want even more tricks read Scott Kelby's "The Digital Photography Book series) Peterson goes through the usual suspects; frame your subjects, rule of thirds, backgrounds, focus (depth of field), arranging items within the picture and many others. Because the publisher printed the example photos on excellent paper, you can really see what Peterson is talking about and the sometimes subtle differences between pictures. Even though this book can be read by itself, I think the reader would get even more out of it by first reading the author's classic book "Understanding Exposure" which everyone seems to quote. In Understanding Exposure" he describes better how f stops effect depth of field and emphasis and the differences betweeen Depth of Field in DSLRs and compact cameras. In this book he does list the camera, lens and f stop used for each photo but, to the best of my knowledge he never really explains how to get the same effect with the better...

United States on Nov 24, 2012