A Review of Trey Ratcliff’s Latest eBook Offerings
Intro | Top Ten Mistakes in HDR Processing | Composing the Photo
In a recent post about HDR News & Education, I mentioned and briefly reviewed Trey Ratcliff’s ebook: Top Ten Mistakes in HDR Processing. My review of that book could probably be classified as as “luke warm”. I liked the book conceptually, and Trey’s images were beautiful, but I wanted more substantive instruction on the particular techniques required to fix the problems he mentioned.
About a week ago, however, I received an email from Trey (well, his “ecommerce representative”) explaining that there was a new “bonus version” of the Top Ten Mistakes in HDR Processing eBook and that I could upgrade for free. I jumped at this offer, and I have to say, the new “Special Fixes” sections that have been added to the book are a major upgrade. Since the book has been so upgraded, I’ve decided to do a more thorough review of it, as well as a review of Trey’s latest eBook: Composing the Photo.
Top Ten Mistakes in HDR Processing
Trey Ratcliff’s Top Ten Mistakes in HDR Processing eBook is a collection of common problems that crop up in HDR photos. These include things like halos, over saturation of colors, and “dirty clouds”. Each one of these problems is presented with an example image that shows the problem, a brief description of how to fix the problem and a sample image that has been done “correctly”. This was the original content of the eBook (and I believe you can still buy a version that includes just this) and, frankly, it felt a little bit lacking. Though Trey’s images are as gorgeous as ever, some of the problems he described called out for much more detailed explanations of how to fix the problem. The new “bonus version” of the book contains “Special Fix” sections for a number of the problems that are the more detailed explanations I was looking for. These “special fixes” sections contain screenshots from Photoshop and almost step-by-step instructions of how to fix the problem. The addition of these new sections raise the book from “nice to have” status for a HDR photographer to a notch just below “must have”. The only thing keeping this book from fully reaching “must have” status is that some of sections (like “localized halos”) give a basic solution of “clean up in Photoshop after HDR processing” but then do not provide a detailed “special fix” of just what to do in Photoshop.
If you watched or listened to any photography podcasts in the last year, you undoubtedly stumbled across David duChemin and his book Within the Frame. TThe book was about the art of taking photographs, talking about vision and expression without going into the minutia of which aperture or shutter speed to use. Composing the Photo is Trey Ratcliff’s version of that type of book.
The book follows up its introduction with a number of photography related exercises to help start expanding photographic vision. It then goes into sections that could loosely be defined as “rules” (however, Trey makes it clear that none of these particular rules need to always followed (other than “Trey’s Rule of Thirds”)). These sections contain information that is very similar to what one would find in David duChemin’s book, only presented in what I feel is a tighter, easier to understand package.
The “book” section of the eBook (I assume this where the basic version of the book would conclude) concludes with an examination of what elements in landscape photos create the most popular photos. Backed-up with numbers from his own personal Flickr page, Trey expands how to create a picture that people will find pleasing. It’s a solid way to tie the earlier discussed concepts together.
The bonus version of the eBook ends with a collection of “notes” on composition (I assume this section is not in the standard version of the book). These notes could be compared to an FAQ about composition. There are a number of examples of how Trey composed and cropped images to get what he felt was the ideal composition.
When Within the Frame came out, I figured there would be more books on the way that were similar in their style and content. Trey Ratcliff’s latest eBook, Composing the Photo, is the first one that I’ve found that tries climb that proverbial mountain. Though I do not intend to take anything away from David’s book, I found Trey’s takes to be both tighter and easier to understand. While his earlier eBook, Top Ten Mistakes in HDR Processing, focused exclusively on Trey’s bread and butter of HDR photography, this eBook should speak to photographers as a whole. I think that any beginner through intermediate-advanced photographer would learn something from Trey’s book and at a $10 price point for the bonus version, it’s pretty closer to “no-brainer” status.
NOTE: The links I have setup to Trey’s books are affiliate links, which means I get a small percentage of the sale of the books if you get there through my site. I personally do not feel that has impacted my reviews in any way, however, feel free to take this information into account when evaluating my review.
