[wulinka]

did someone on ST recently recommend a book on improving your photography?
I have a distinct feeling it was here, as there are not many other places on I frequent on the web,
but I cannot find the post.
It was, for all I remember, a book by a male photographer,
would anyone remember?

Thanks, Uli

[Irma]

We talked about National Geographic Digital Photography Field Guide... The post is in this forum four of five post above this one.... posted by Jules.

I understood they have books by topics, landscapes, portraits and so on.
Here is the link in Amazon.
I am thinking about getting landscapes, but still not so sure.

[matthew]

The other one that I've frequently seen recommended, and own and recommend myself, is Bryan Peterson's book "Understanding Exposure". I should have a review of it completed in a couple of days.

[wulinka]

Still does not seem what I am looking for.
I can't for the heck of it think of where I read about it, but I know I put it on my mental shopping list.
In the mess of moving, even if I had put in on a material or digital one, it might still have been lost.

I remember seeing a web page and the author writing about he improved his photography.
Stupid thing is I was using the University's PC in China and before I left uninstalled all programs I had installed,
including mozilla....

oh well..

Funny how not only material things can be lost

Uli

[Kombisaurus]

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.

[shuttertalk]

I also mentioned the "the digital photography book" by Scott Kelby in my ASUS Eee review...

http://shuttertalk.com/articles/asuseee

hmm any more clues?

[Irma]

Thanks Kombi for the advice.
I saw the book just now, and there are two editions I think. Ed. 2004 is 10.51euro and Ed. 1993 is 23.51euro. I am curious about the difference in prices. What edition did you buy?

It comes really handy as I was already looking for a companion in my flight to Mexico in few weeks.

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Irma,
I bought the 2004 Edition (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1552636143) - I'm not sure about the 1993 edition?
oops, I also just noticed I misspelt Freeman Patterson in my other post! sorry!

[wulinka]

Freeman Petterson's "Photography and the Art of Seeing" sounds really interesting, even though I still think it is not the one I had on my mind.

but it seems a good idea to have a thread on books, lots of good stuff on here!

Uli

[matthew]

Freeman Patterson's books had a lot of influence on how I started out, and I have to admit that his workshop approach is what led to my interest in doing assignments many years ago. "The Art of Seeing" is probably his best; I also have "Photographing the World Around You", which is very similar. Having one of them is great, having two of them becomes redundant. (For what it's worth, he's also a lifetime member and past president of my camera club, and dropped in at the last meeting that I was at.)

"The Moment it Clicks" is a great ideas book, and a pretty advanced how-to. It's one of those books that I just pick up and read from any page.

And I've finished the second draft of my review of Understanding Exposure, which can be found on my other blog, `thew's reviews.

[Irma]

Hi Matthew,

One of the things I have always problems with is exposure. That is why some people think I have learned a lot to post process my pictures to be able to change skys... Anyway, I read your review and it helped me a lot to my decision. I bought the book and it arrived today at noon. I have read just the first pages and I am loving it already!! and of course I went to shoot the fields, thing that I hadn't done for many months.

New books are great motivation, I think. I have great hopes that with the time it will help me to understand much better how to work my exposure...

Thanks a lot for the review. I have always admired the clear way you write. I also like that is long enough to get the idea.

The other book that will arrive in few days is "Photography and the Art of Seeing". It will take a few days more as it comes from UK.

Thanks so much to all that participate in this post with great advice for books...

[matthew]

Thanks Irma, I'm glad the review helped, and hope you like the book.

I'm really bad for buying photography books faster than I can 'read' them. I've recently bought 'The Photographer's Eye' and 'The Americans', and have only looked through one of them once; I'm waiting for Amazon to get more copies of Fred Herzog's 'Vancouver Photographs' so that they'll ship it with my copy of Rob Stewart's 'Sharkwater'; this weekend I was visiting family out of town and couldn't pass up a chance to buy 'The Tao of Photography' when I found a copy that hadn't been thumbed through by half of the wannabes in Toronto. (It was a choice between the Tao or the 30th anniversary edition of Freeman Patterson's Photography for the Joy of It.) But with all those bought, now I'll settle down for a few months and take plenty of time to go through them all.

I still have to wonder if my photography book collection is worth more than some of my cameras...

[Irma]

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.

Thanks Kombi for the recommendation, the book arrived today and it is fantastic!! You are right, very much the photography I like, It doesn't have so many pictures but the ones it has are splendid, and so are the writings.

Looking for Nature photography books I found "Creative Nature & Outdoor photography" by Brenda Tharp. I bought it and arrived last Friday. It has beautiful pictures and she describes why she took the picture, what she saw, the themes are very interesting. She doesn't talk about technical things of your camera, she takes all her pictures with film, sometimes she only makes reference about the film she used to get certain effect. How to creat your picture, what to look for and how to get the best of the subject like textures, paterns, lines are some of the many topic this book has. I am very pleased with this book too.

[Kombisaurus]

That's great Irma. I'm enjoying it too!
Now I just have to stop reading books and do more shooting...

[wulinka]

Kombi,

sometimes I think exactly the opposite, I should take a break from shooting all the time and read a book every now and then.


Uli

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Uli, I started writing a response to you, but soon realised it was a bit long and off-topic for this thread.
So I started a new thread in case anyone feels like talking about this kind of stuff.

The thread is called "Where I'm at with my photography... How about you?" and is located at:
http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewto...905#p64905