I bought Tim Fitzharris' Nature Photography in a bookstore, where I was able to see that its surprisingly-low price did not mean a major sacrifice in quality or content.It's true that the book's page production quality is just below the razor-sharp high-gloss standard set by books by John Shaw and Niall Benvie. However it is a minor sacrifice - the images are generally very sharp, colours are good, and in the few images where these seem slightly compromised, the content of the book more than makes up for it.
Fitzharris is a talented photographer offering many marvellous and inspiring images in his 160+ pages. His book includes the usual information about recommended equipment and films for shooting nature, as well as chapters on picture design and close-up, wildlife and landscape photography.
However all chapters include more than the usual basics. Fitzharris is refreshing in that he offers his experienced and unvarnished opinions along with the conventional advice he offers.
His book is most outstanding, though, in the detail it offers about dealing with nature as a subject. Other nature photography books (I've purchased about ten in the past year) are weighted heavily to photographic technique and don't provide much information about finding or setting the situation in nature before you can photograph it.
Fitzharris provides advice about finding the things you may want to photograph, and about getting them to cooperate. For example, he suggests throwing a shirt over a snake found in the wilderness. The snake will quietly stay in place, whereupon you can carefully set up your equipment for a close-up, and then remove the shirt. Discussion of floating and stationary blinds, shooting in ponds, shooting insects, shooting nests, getting great closeups and more are full of tips like this.
In short, this is one of the best "how-to" nature photography books for people who want to go into the wilderness and take pictures. Very highly recommended.
