by Ellen Wallace, editor, GenevaLunch

Alistair Scott’s name will be known to many in the Lake Geneva region: he is an active member of the Geneva Writers’ Group and in 2007 he published a well-received book of poetry. He’s is probably better known in larger circles for his informative blog on photography. Scott, who is British and lives in Gland, worked for 20 years in Africa as a teacher, environmentalist and trail leader in a game park. Not surprisingly, he honed his photograpy skills there and he’s continued to do so in a very different landscape, Switzerland.

Now he’s written a gem of a book, The Greatest Photography Tips in the World, one of a series from The Greatest in the World publishers in the UK. As a passionate photographer and reader who nevertheless doesn’t like to read photography books (even worse: camera manuals), I have to say I think Scott has got it right. Here are all the things I like about this book:

• critically important: the reproduction quality of the colour photos is excellent, a surprise in a small book that, with a list price of £9.99, is relatively inexpensive
• the photos themselves are beautiful and the points they make are clear
• it is readily portable: it fits neatly into a camera bag or large pocket at 18×13cm, a shade over 1.3mm thick (200 pages)
• it’s a hardback but the weight isn’t too bad
• the layout is uncomplicated and not too dense – I find it difficult to absorb more than one bit of technical information at a time before my bored mind drifts back to what the camera and I are seeing.

One of the challenges of a book like this is making it appeal to people with different levels of skills and I think Scott manages to achieve this. I learned about depth-of-field nearly 40 years ago and so skipped over it, although in skimming I wondered if the language of the explanation wasn’t perhaps too technical for some beginners.

But I immediately found several tips I needed, things I should have learned long ago but I’m lazy about making technical improvements, and I suspect I’m not alone. I learned for the first time what the Raw setting on my camera means, and I was delighted as a whole new world of image correction options opened up. I’ve never paid much attention to the irritating blinking highlights that show burned-out areas on my camera and he’s just taught me that this is a clue to reduce the exposure. He offers some sensible advice on composition. As an editor who sees too many poorly composed photos I can only shout “hurrah!” because it’s never too late to remind photographers of basics, such as making the horizon horizontal.

It’s a great little gift for the photographer in your family or, of course, yourself, because if you’ve read this far you’re probably also part of the army of camera owners who regularly wish we could do better.

The book is in stock (15 February) at Books Books Books in Lausanne or online from Off the Shelf in Geneva and Amazon.

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