Tag: recommendations

Three Photography Books You Need

Here’s three great photography books you’ll want in your library that you might have overlooked at the bookstore. Two cover how to take an amazing photograph, the other is how to compose them.

Photography, good photography, is a complex and deep subject, primarily that it’s an art about making trade-offs. A while back, I wrote about The Best Photography Books Ever on Light.

I’d like to now share three photography books that you need in your personal library.

The first two come from Scott Kelby, whom you may know from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) because he’s the Editor in Chief of the Photoshop User magazine.

If you’re one of “those” people, hang in there. It’s worth it.

Scott Kelby. People either love him or hate him. He has two common complaints against him, which I personally think are unfounded or are at least irrelevant. The first is that he has a ‘unique’ writing style which injects a bit of humor into his books. I like it, it makes them more personable and less dry; some want him to cut to the point. The second is that people accuse NAPP of being just a Scott Kelby fan club, and that he can do no wrong. I haven’t seen that, I just know I’ve learned more new tricks from Photoshop User than elsewhere. Kelby is good, Kelby delivers, and so do these two books. If you’re an Anti-Kelby person, at least browse them when you feel no one is looking.

The Digital Photography Book, Volume 1

The Digital Photography Book
Volume 1

 The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2

The Digital Photography Book
Volume 2

The trick here is not to make the mistake by looking at just the covers that one book is a reprint of the other. They are two separate books, and you want both.

The Digital Photography Book (ISBN 0-321-47404-X) addresses how to get really tack-sharp photos by doing things like using the lowest ISO, good quality glass, turning off your image stabilizer, using a sturdy tripod, finding the “sweet spot” in your lens, locking your mirror up first, and using a remote shutter release. Yes, it covers how and why.

You even get tips on how to do a bit of post-processing for extra sharpness, using Unsharp Mask and LAB Colors (not RGB). Even if you’ve done photography for a while, there’s gonna be stuff in here you most likely didn’t know. Or didn’t know how to do well. Or easily.

There’s also practical advice along with little cheats you can do. You’ll understand a light a little better and manipulate the scene to get those wonderful backgrounds and deal with problem lighting problems. If you got yourself committed to taking wedding photos, there’s an important section you need to know.

A lot of photography has to do with composition and compensation. Ever notice how two photographers with the same gear can take a picture of the same thing, and one gets an incredible shot, and the other gets a boring and flat images. You’ll learn why and how to get the good shot.

There is even a wonderful section on how to take fantastic portraits; a section on avoiding mistakes; equipment recommendations; and even a section that shows “if you want this kind of photo then do this.”

The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2 (ISBN 0-321-47404-X) covers flash and strobes, reflector tricks, impressive seamless/colored backgrounds, advanced light metering, and how to get those multi-light touches on your subject. More portrait tricks are revealed, along with low-light, sunrise, sunset, and landscape scenes. More is covered on bad weather conditions, weddings, and touring. Again, there’s a shot recipe section in the back. This book is clearly a continuation of the first and not an afterthought or a sequel to make more sales. Good quality stuff.

The next book in your collection should be The Photographer’s Eye by Micheal Freeman (ISBN 0-240-80934-3).

Composition is hard to master. Things like frame dynamic, tension, placement, rhythm, etc. all seem pretty artsy-fartsy hand-waving mumbo-jumbo to anyone who’s trying to study the science behind creative photography.

This book explains with contrasting visuals what these terms mean and what you can do to get them. A fantastic illustration (p. 25) shows a bench in a field, but simply by cropping and using angles, the viewers eye is compelled to follow in different directions.

You’ll see how and why the rule of thirds works, how there’s also the golden ratio frame, fibonacci divisions, geometrical slicing, and fractals as alternate methods of placement. You’ll know when to fill the frame, when not to, and where not to. You’ll control the horizon. Convey balance though perceived weights, not just mirroring placement. Foreground, background, contrast, repetition of patterns, broken patterns, perspective, forced perspective, limited color, …there’s so much here.

This book alone will change the way that you view a scene and provide you many different ways to capture it, both in camera and how to make an even more impressive photo by elimination back post-processing.

So there ya have it. Two books to take a really amazing picture, and one book to compose a fantastic one.

REVIEW: Walt gives all three titles here two thumbs up!

Remember those split-books?

After ranking over 10,000 items in Amazon, I’m seeing interesting stuff from time to time. However, none as amusing as this.

A while ago, I thought it might be fun to conduct an experiment and rank anything and everything that Amazon showed me. In fact, the rank wasn’t necessarily even important, I just wanted to see what would happen as recommendation after recommendation was ticked off. Would Amazon’s suggestions get better? Would it run out of suggestions? Would it result in an overflow message?

Well, I ranked over 10,000 items over the course of several months, ranging from computer books to perfume. What I found was that in the short term you could get Amazon to run out of things to recommend you. In the longer term, it got a little better recommending things, though the categories get broader, and if you stumble into a new kind of category, it leaps at the chance to have options again to show you. And, finally, nothing spectacular happened numerically when I crossed five digits.

That said, every so often, Amazon makes some amusing recommendations choices. However, this time it was the presentation that was amusing unto itself that I took a snapshot.

Know those split-books you had as a kid, where the page was divided? You’d get half an animal on top, and half an animal on the bottom. Allowing you to make a giraf-o-potamous, an elepha-gator, or a kanga-mander.

Amazon selected two products and presented them split-book fashion. Order, it turned out, was important:

Amazon Split-Book

It’s the top of a woman from 2002, and the bottom of another from 2007, put together it looks like one woman standing behind two cut outs on the product recommendation page. I couldn’t help but give each half five stars for creativity.