This second edition of this best-selling guide to taking photographs while on the road has been thoroughly updated and revised to include a special new section on digital photography. Also includes new information on black and white photography techniques.

2008-01-22 Needs to pick an audience and go with it

For a book that specifically states in its opening pages that it is NOT aimed at people wishing to take professional photographs, but at travellers who want to improve their holiday snaps, the advice contained in the subsequent chapters rather misses the point.

For a start, there is a large section devoted to film photography, and I would hazard that a VERY small minority of casual photographers now use a film camera (and I'm sure this was the trend even back in late 2004, when this book was published). Really the majority of people who still use film are at least intermediate, if not professional.

The introduction observes that travel photographers must be able to take pictures in varied light and weather: "The continuing challenge is to take consitently good photographs in very inconsistent conditions", but the remainder of the book doesn't live up to it by providing solutions for taking pictures in adverse conditions, beyond recommending a tactic of wait, and wait, and wait, or return the next day, for that break in the clouds that will illuminate your subject - which for most travellers simply isn't practical. More helpful to tourist-photographers would be suggestions on how to prevent that overcast sky on the day we visit from spoiling our souvenir photographs of the Taj Mahal, more emphasis on composition (6 pages) than equipment (65 pages, of which 11 are dedicated to film photography alone), and avoiding common mistakes.

On the other hand, the large proportion of basic information means it doesn't really suit the intermediate photographer travelling with the purpose of photography and the hope of turning professional.

Although there is certainly a wealth of excellent advice, beautifully and amply illustrated with Richard l'Anson's photographs (though I would still like to see more examples of "here's what you can achieve even in less-than-perfect conditions" - good photography is always easier given great weather), this book left me with the feeling that it needed to pick an audience, whether it's beginners wanting to improve on their tourist snaps, or intermediate photographers wanting to take the next step and start earning from their pictures, rather than trying to straddle both camps and satisfying neither.