Andrew Gibson is back with another release for Craft and Vision. You may remember his previous titles The Magic of Black and White (Parts I, II and III) but if you don’t, I urge you to check them out. This latest one is titled The Evocative Image : A Photographer’s Guide To Capturing Mood and aims to help you go from simply taking sharp, well-exposed pictures to being able to capture and express the mood you felt at the time you made the photograph.

Before I get too far into it, if you’ve come here looking for the weekly link series I’ve been posting, it’ll be on Sunday this week (Saturday night for you folks in North America). As well as the links, the new March desktop calendar will be ready for download so check back then.

In order to express mood, it’s necessary to first define it and Andrew does so in the opening paragraphs. He states that mood and feelings exist everywhere and in everything, not just in the world’s “beauty spots”. For the majority of photographers who don’t live in a “beauty spot”, that’s refreshing news indeed. Many people immediately think of black and white when they think mood, and Andrew himself has previously written 3 eBooks dealing with black and white imagery. In this release however, he’s just looking at color.

Key to capturing and expressing mood is the ability to interpret the scene. One frame may not be enough. Equally, one processing technique may also not be enough – variations on the theme can evoke different feelings in both photograpehr and viewer. Shooting during the golden hour is covered – it’s a small window of opportunity that photographers everywhere love. Beware of cliches though. It’s very easy for a photographer to create a boring photograph at sunrise or sunset but with a little thought and planning, you can take full advantage of this time. Some suggestions are offered within for you to consider.

The golden hour is familair to most photographers but do you know what the blue hour is? This is often one of the best times for moody photography and it’d be a mistake to miss it. The Evocative Image discusses a few ideas for photography during this time of day. Low light and backlighting are also covered in this section.

From there we move on to color and its power. Some of the concepts here may be ones you intuitively know while others may never have occurred to you. There are creative exercises here as well to get you thinking in terms of the power and control of color.

Gibson’s eBook ventures into territory we as photographers often avoid. Overexposure, doing the opposite of what you normally do, long shutter speeds. All are covered and all can take you closer to expressing mood. The section on fragments and details makes important reading. I often encourage photographers to pay extra attention to these facets of a place in order to move deeper into it, and that is dealt with here and includes discussion of lenses for close ups.

Finally, backgrounds are covered with another series of creative exercises. The importance of the background, using wide apertures and telephoto lenses to create different moody and cinematic effects.

As usual with Craft and Vision releases, there is a special offer for the first few days. If you use the promotional code EVOCATIVE4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of The Evocative Image for only $4 OR use the code EVOCATIVE20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST February 28, 2011. Click here to visit Craft And Vision.