Working the Light, a Book Review
More Inspiring Landscape Photography from the Light and Land Team
Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and David Ward are three of Britain’s leading landscape photographers. They have cemented and enhanced their reputations through their company Light and Land, which each year arranges an invariably over-subscribed series of workshops on the art of landscape photography.
Light and Land Workshops
In Working the Light the editor, Eddie Ephraums, has tried to reproduce for wider distribution a taste of the Light and Land workshop experience. He brings the observations and thoughts of the three principal authors to bear on a small selection of each other’s work and on 96 wonderful photographs submitted by 49 workshop participants.
The book is divided into three chapters: Wilderness Landscapes, by Cornish; Inhabited Landscapes, by Waite; and Inner Landscapes by Ward. Within each chapter the author presents a handful of his own images together with a general account of his personal development and approach to his work, his five “top tips”, and a gallery of 28 images submitted by participants in Light and Land workshops.
Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscapes
A paragraph or two of interesting, insightful comments accompanies each main image. But these comments are not always obviously related to that particular photograph, and for more details the reader has to turn to a separate section at the end of the chapter.
Here, each image is represented by a thumbnail with technical details and a few comments by both the photographer and the authors of the book. The authors’ comments tend to be positive, sometimes almost verging on the sycophantic, but occasionally revealing differences of approach or artistic appreciation.
Separating the comments and explanations from the main pictures is a pity, because the thumbnails are too small to appreciate many of the points being made. Perhaps the editor worried that technical material in the main body of the book would distract from an aesthetic appreciation of the photographs; but this approach weakens the book’s enormous instructional potential.
Landscape Photography Equipment
Aside from stressing the importance of graduated filters, the book commendably avoids much discussion of equipment. Even so, it is worth noting that most of the included photographs were taken with medium or large format cameras, though a few excellent shots were from simpler and more accessible 35 mm models.
Four fifths of the photographs were shot on film and the remaining fifth with digital cameras, and about half of the filmed shots were scanned and tweaked with levels or curves controls in Photoshop, though often by no more than enough to match the digital image with the original print or slide.
Without more information about when each picture was taken it is difficult to know whether these proportions represent the current technical status of leading edge landscape photography, or what trends might be emerging.
Raising Landscape Photography Standards
Though it does not really present the masterclass promised in the sub-title, overall this is a fine book. For anyone thinking of attending a Light and Land workshop, Working the Light well illustrates the high standards to expect. For everyone else, this is another immensely impressive book from the Light and Land team that will inspire any serious landscape photographer to raise his game.
Working the Light: A Landscape Photography Masterclass, by Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and David Ward, edited by Eddie Ephraums; Argentum, 2006, 160 pp, 96 main images, ISBN 1 902538 46 3, softback £13.00 / $16.47 at Amazon
