Take Your Photography to the Next Level: From Inspiration to Image

by George Barr

This book is for the photographer who strives to achieve a higher level of results in their work. Take Your Photography to the Next Level is based on a series of essays originally featured on the popular Luminous Landscape website. Barr tackles some of the rarely discussed, yet essential aspects of successful photography. Here is where photographers will learn what is required in order to grow in their creativity and to gain a deeper understanding of their craft. With a foreward by Michael Reichmann. Topics

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction

199 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

George Edward Barr was an American science fiction and fantasy artist.

Reviews

[Lunamania · Rating 2 out of 5]

George Barr, the blogger behind Luminous Landscape, comes at us with this book with much potential. He decided to write this book "when he discovered he could explain things clearly" --a point he makes explicitly several more times in the book. Barr is a family doctor and his writing is didactic in that friendly, yet patronizing medical professional way.

It's too bad his editors didn't temper this self-important voice because the book is a solid and clearly written primer on the elusive practice of "seeing" creatively. Barr walks readers through basic concepts behind visual composition (lines, points, planes, texture, tones, color etc.) and offers step-by-step instructions on critiquing and fully experiencing an image.

The images are beautiful and some are technical masterpieces of digital darkroom wizardry. The technique and craft lessons are helpful. It's a useful primer if you can get past the self-flattery.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Take Your Photography to the Next Level contains more questions than answers, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but at this phase in my photography I need both. My real complaint is that the author is very verbose and the book can be tiring to read at times.

[Cleeo · Rating 3 out of 5]

An up and down read. Of course hoping for a magic bullet is a pretty useless exercise. There were some good nuggets of information though and I have some stuff to think about. Overall I liked it.

[Teena in Toronto · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have three cameras ... a Canon point-and-shoot that is usually in my purse, a Nikon D5100 DSLR along with some lenses, and a Nikon CoolPix (that's in between the two) that I use often. Needless to say, I take a lot of pictures. Gord and I took some classes last year to learn how to (1) use our cameras in other than auto mode and (2) take photographs, not just pictures.

I'm still an amateur and like reading photography books to see what professionals take pictures of and how they do it.

On a positive note, I thought most of the pictures in this book were really cool.

But to me it seemed like a book the author has written for himself about himself. Yes, there is some information but I found it was was at a really high level. He states upfront that this is not a book about "technical matters" but instead "tackles the more difficult questions in photography" ... alas it fell flat for me. I wasn't crazy about the writing style and found it boring.

Blog review: http://www.teenaintoronto.com/2013/09...