Jun 25, 2008, 20:58
Coincidently I just received an order of photography books from Amazon yesterday, but I don't think I mentioned any of them on here previously.
Most notable is Joe McNally's "The Moment It Clicks" which is regarded on strobist.com as one of the best lighting books ever. I'm not sure if I'd go that far (I haven't read many lighting books to compare), but it is certainly a great book with some excellent tips and loads of really entertaining stories for anyone with an interest in photography.
Second on the list is Freeman Patterson's "Photography and the Art of Seeing" which focuses almost entirely on the mental processes of seeing and composing the shot in your mind and has basically nothing at all to do with cameras. Many of the photos in this book aren't really my "thing", but the information seems excellent and that's what this book is all about, so I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into it. Irma in particular, I think you'd absolutely love this book.
Thirdly I got Jim Krause's "Photo Idea Index". This seems more a quick reference guide to get your creative juices flowing than the kind of book you'd sit down and read through. Skimming through it is a bit like skimming through all the photo assignments here on shuttertalk. You get a theme, some brief discussions, and a bunch of photos on the theme to give you ideas to go off and shoot your own thing. Nothing more and nothing less. A good little book to skip through with some sticky notes the night before a photo-shoot to give you some ideas to try the next day - that kind of thing. It looks OK, but not brilliant.
Finally I got Martin Evening's "Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers" which is more a computing reference book than a photography book, and looks like some fairly heavy reading. My first impressions are excellent however, and it focuses nicely on the needs of a photographer rather than being a general photoshop book and trying to cover all the stuff I'm not interested in. I've seen a heap of dissappointing photoshop books in my time, but this one might be exactly what I've been after.
Most notable is Joe McNally's "The Moment It Clicks" which is regarded on strobist.com as one of the best lighting books ever. I'm not sure if I'd go that far (I haven't read many lighting books to compare), but it is certainly a great book with some excellent tips and loads of really entertaining stories for anyone with an interest in photography.
Second on the list is Freeman Patterson's "Photography and the Art of Seeing" which focuses almost entirely on the mental processes of seeing and composing the shot in your mind and has basically nothing at all to do with cameras. Many of the photos in this book aren't really my "thing", but the information seems excellent and that's what this book is all about, so I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into it. Irma in particular, I think you'd absolutely love this book.
Thirdly I got Jim Krause's "Photo Idea Index". This seems more a quick reference guide to get your creative juices flowing than the kind of book you'd sit down and read through. Skimming through it is a bit like skimming through all the photo assignments here on shuttertalk. You get a theme, some brief discussions, and a bunch of photos on the theme to give you ideas to go off and shoot your own thing. Nothing more and nothing less. A good little book to skip through with some sticky notes the night before a photo-shoot to give you some ideas to try the next day - that kind of thing. It looks OK, but not brilliant.
Finally I got Martin Evening's "Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers" which is more a computing reference book than a photography book, and looks like some fairly heavy reading. My first impressions are excellent however, and it focuses nicely on the needs of a photographer rather than being a general photoshop book and trying to cover all the stuff I'm not interested in. I've seen a heap of dissappointing photoshop books in my time, but this one might be exactly what I've been after.
Adrian Broughton
My Website: www.BroughtonPhoto.com.au
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Einstein.