Creative Night: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

Great

Edit: I've changed this review since my initial writing. It didn't get better. More or less I condensed.I have several problems with this book:The first being a problem with the title itself. It's misleading. This guy isn't doing 'creative' night photography; he's doing regular night photography that is featured in every other book on the subject. His title indicates a departure from standards, a new approach, and a certain expectation comes with it. Needless to say, I don't feel the book lives up to it's title at all. This is a problem with the author's other books, too, I'm afraid; his 'creative' composition book, and his 'creative' portrait books are fairly UNcreative as well.This guy has created a series of books labeled "Creative" to represent everything that is already present in other more general books.If each book were better, and actually gave examples of very radical creative techniques and not just the standard fair, it would be a worthwhile investment for anyone that has been shooting longer than a year in any particular area; unfortunately, that isn't the case.The book is anemic in a lot of ways: An example would be how short each section in this book are, when it comes to various things. Night time HDR deserves more than one or two pages, surely. Light painting does too. There is a lot of information missing entirely.The guy is a poor writer, for the most part; the structure of the book is weak. The greater sin is that he isn't a good teacher, though.I feel like this guy, along with a lot of other photographic "teachers," "gurus," and authors just build up a massive amount of photos over the years and in an effort to monetize their back catalog, put out a book using the images they have laying around that don't sell.So, as other reviewers point out, the problem with this book is that the examples aren't even that great. There are perhaps 10 photos in the book that I would consider stellar, but the bulk aren't even photos that I would publish on a professional level. A lot of the photos suffer heavy noise, purple fringing, off color casts, improper white balance, chromatic issues, etc.I'm a night photographer of only a few years experience and my images consistently turn out better than those featured in this book.Part of the problem with his photos is that he doesn't follow what I think is the two golden rules of night photography:1.) Patience, and2.) Re-shoot until perfect. Making changes and re-shooting in an iteration-to-perfection plan is the secret to good, and even great night photography. Above all other things, this will make great images happen.And: As an editorial process, part of the work is to only let your best work out the door, right?Part of me wonders if this book weren't a by-product of publisher pressure or the beg of a needed paycheck. Who knows.I also suspect that some of the reviews of this book may be planted by the publisher. In revisiting this review, I checked GoodReads for the reviews of this book, and the average reviews were 3/5 there. The criticisms are harsher in greater volumes on that site. Something I've noticed in the past is that publishers tend to only pay for reviews to be planted on purchase sites, and not generally on third-party sites.What I wanted when I purchased this book, was a book that was entirely about night photography, was very detailed when it came to the subject and would teach me a lot that I didn't already know from my general photographic experience and understanding, what I'd read from blogs, other books, and learned from other shooters. I will plainly say that I did not get anything I wanted from this book.The bottom line is that this guy isn't a night photographer, and night photography is a special art. The nuance of it requires a lot of explanation that isn't present int his book.I also bought "Creative Portraits" and I also feel it is sub-par.On this review, the author himself has posted a reply to my review wherein he offered to buy back the book and cover shipping. I don't even know how to feel about this offer. On the one-hand, I'd love to take advantage of this to get my money back. On the other hand, it almost feels like he is attempting to buy his way out of bad reviews.Recommendations on photographic education:Basic Photography:  Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera Furthered Basic Photography:  Understanding Shutter Speed: Creative Action and Low-Light Photography Beyond 1/125 Second Night Photography:  Night Photography: Finding your way in the dark Night Photography: Finding your way in the dark, by Lance Keimig is by far the best book on the subject of Night Photography I've read.

Night photography is a huge subject. Harold Davis does a good job of covering many of its aspects in a clear and straightforward way. Since he is primarily a landscape photographer, many of the example photos are of landscapes, though he does cover many other areas of the subject such as cityscapes, light trails, light painting, moonlight photography, simple object photography and more. A short list of equipment is discussed and helpful extras are mentioned. While there is not yet a definitive book on night photography, Creative Night is my current favorite.Davis also includes a section on post processing with Photoshop. Two night specific techniques that cover stacking multiple exposures to capture star trails and noise removal are very helpful.While specific technique descriptions are mostly brief, all images include exposure details that provide a good starting point for personal experimentation. And experimentation is a main theme of this book. Less experienced photographers may want a bit more hand holding. There's very little fundamental photography instruction here. Davis has written this book for photographers who understand the basics of exposure and camera operation. That saves a lot of padding that many writers include in their manuals to increase the page count. If you're new to photography and want do do some night shots, do learn exposure basics and study your camera manual first.In addition to photography how-tos Davis does offer important information specific to night photography, much of which seems like common sense. But it's easy to overlook a detail that means the difference between a successful and safe photo shoot and a disaster. For example: dress warmly, learn your camera control by feel and rote so you can operate in darkness, dress for visibility, get permission to photograph sites, scout your location by day, and so on. While some of this seems obvious, it's these details that help make for a safe, comfortable and hopefully successful shoot.

I had seen Davis' videos on youTube, and was very impressed by him. I bought a couple of his books initially, and then several others so that I now have 9 of them. Each one, so far, is excellent--it is taking me longer than I expected to read them because there is so much information to absorb. If you want to learn whatever the subject matter of the book is, from the concepts behind the subject (night photography, lighting, etc.) planning for the picture (e.g., the use of lightboxes to create translucent pictures), to the detailed post-processing of them in Photoshop or equivalent, you will not be disappointed--at least, I haven't.

I have always enjoyed shooting at night but I recently felt like my photographs hadn't improved. I was looking for something to point me in a different direction and this book does the trick. I have pored over this book since I received it in the mail. I was familiar with shooting light trails and buildings at night but I hadn't experimented much with landscape and star trails. Thanks to the information put in the book I will soon start experimenting with new night time and long exposure photography. If you are interested at all in shooting at night, buy this book. You will not be disappointed.

The seller of this book delivered a LNIB book and I'm very thankful to that. After reading about half of it I was kinda disappointed. Not much insight to normal knowledge of shooting at night. Please don't let that stop you from buying and reading as it is an easy read and there is always something to be learned especially in photography.

Nice read, interesting points made. Not really a training book, but better value than a whole pile of monthly magazines which will tell you half this stuff for twice the price.

Harold has done it again, A great read with plenty of information.

Basics of night photography are on... but somehow think the book doesn't go far enough. Sky photography well covered, but not much of other stuff.

C'est un livre photo agréable qui donne quelques recettes (peu mais bien choisies). Il est par ailleurs très agréable à parcourir et les photos sont belles... Mais la principale découverte reste le fond: en résumé, faire de la photo de nuit c'est 99% de préparation de jour et chez soi (pour les réglages) puis de l'attente sur le terrain, le temps de prendre la photo (poses de plusieurs minutes, souvent).

Having just skimmed the book there may be more in there.I think I could sum up the book as:Use aperture to force long exposureUse bulb setting to control length of exposureUse trial and error to get right resultLots of pictures taken by the author that imho are all to brightly lit and often look like a weird daytimne shot.