"Cameras don't take photos, people do" is the premise for this handy guide to digital photography. It sets out to be a practical guide that shows that you don't need expensive photographic equipment to take good photographs.



Various aspects of the camera and photography, both practical and creative, are explained briefly and concisely without getting technical. Lenses and Focal lengths; Using a Fisheye Lens; Working with Macro Lenses; Understanding Exposure; ISO and Noise; Mulit-Raw Processing Beyond Landscapes; Shutter Speed and Motion; Exposing for the Earth and the Sky at Night; Seeing the unexpected; Photography That Tells a Story; Abstraction; Combining Images; Surrealism; Patterns; Framing; Black and White; Perspective, are just a few around 75 different topics covered.



Each topic opens with a brief introduction followed by examples. It is illustrated throughout with the authors own colour photographs on virtually everyone of its 240 pages, and each photograph is accompanied by a brief explanation of what the photographer set out to do and how he achieved it, including the equipment and settings used, all this information is extremely useful. Sometimes comparative examples or steps are illustrated. The scope of the guide is vast, as is the variety of the pictures, so most should find something that appeals here.



The presentation is good, although I would have favoured a serif typeface for the text rather than the sans face chosen here, it does not make for ease of reading. Included is a Further Reading list, Glossary and Index.



Creative Composition is a useful book; but it is perhaps best taken in small doses, the danger, with with so much information covered in very short sections, one is tempted to cover too much in one go. What it does not do is discuss to any extent the use of photo-editing software, reference is made to Adobe Photoshop (it does not mention other software such as Corel Photo-Paint), but there is little here that explains how to use the software, nor does it explore many of the the creative possibilities of such software.