I’ve been going through my library looking for things I’ve wanted to talk about, so here are a few of my favorite photography books.
There are lots of books out there on digital photography and dealing with the workflow and post processing. I currently use CS3 on the Mac with a number of tools like Nik Software’s Viveza and DFine, with Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw doing the heavy lifting on image management. Many books do a decent job of helping you come up with a basic workflow and explaining what the knobs are and how to twaek them, but the books that actually show you how to go beyond the basics and what techniques work for making an image better (or saving a marginal image) are a lot harder to find.
That’s why I think if someone’s looking for a single “iPhoto isn’t cutting it any more, how do I take the next step?” book, I would tell them to grab Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Voices). It’s very focussed on showing you a few key habits to get into on every photo and how to get comfortable with them and adjust them to maximize the impact on the image.
As the Amazon description says –
You’re not going to just learn one technique for fixing shadows, and another technique for adjusting color (every Photoshop book pretty much does that, right?). Instead, you’re going start off at square one, from scratch, as each chapter is just one photo—one project—one challenging lifeless image (you’ll follow along using his the same images), and you’re going to unleash these seven tools, in a very specific way, and you’re going to do it again, and again, and again, in order on different photos, in different situations, until they are absolutely second nature. You’re finally going to do the FULL fix—from beginning to end—with nothing left out, and once you learn these seven very specific techniques, and apply them in order, there won’t be a an image that appears on your screen that you won’t be able to enhance, fix, edit, and finish yourself!
and it’s right. This is a fairly rare book in that I’ve gone back to it and re-read it multiple times, and each time found new nuances that I’ve integrated into my photography workflow. I also like that he stays tight and on topic; there are so many features in Camera Raw and Photoshop that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and a bit lost. Here, Kelby creates a simple processing workflow that you can understand and get comfortable with quickly that is still flexible enough that you can adapt and expand as your skills improve.
This book’s for CS3, but would be fine for CS4 as well if you’ve upgraded. Highly recommended.
Also from Kelby a couple of books I like, especially to be given to new users, is his Digital Photography Book series (The Digital Photography Book and The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2). These are small, inexpensive books of tips. For more seasoned photographers, many of them may seem familiar or “simple”, but I doubt there are many out there that wouldn’t go “oh, interesting!” at least a few times in each book. Primary audience would be the newer photographer, maybe someone just stepping up to a DSLR and looking for ways to move from the “vacation snap” type photography into working towards better quality images.
If you’re looking for books to help you with creating or improving your workflow and the nuts and bolts of what you need to do from snapping the shutter to printing it out, there are two books I like.
Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book (Tim Grey Guides) (also updated for CS4 Photoshop CS4 for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book) is by Elon Anon and Tim Grey. It has a Nature Photography slant, but the guts of the book are about the digital workflow and using Bridge, CS3 (or CS4) and Camera Raw. Their coverage of Camera Raw is solid, but what I really like about the book is how it helps you map out the way you manage a photo through the process. It doesn’t hurt that they have a lot of really good tips on becoming a better nature photographer, but really, much of this book would be relevant to any photographer.
Adobe Camera Raw is the real guts of any digital workflow that uses Photoshop or Lightroom. There are a lot of perfectly okay books that talk about how to use ACR, but I’ve only run into one that really dives deep and and takes you inside the tool and really help you understand the non-intuitive ways to use it. That book is Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3 (also updated for CS4 Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS4) by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe. Fraser was one of the best known geeks with Camera Raw and worked closely with Adobe on improving it, and Schewe has carried his work forward with care. This is the book for people looking to really get deep and dirty with Camera Raw and go beyond pushing sliders and seeing what happens. I’d say this is not a book for people new to the tool or for people trying understand how to use photoshop — but it should be a key reference for those photographers working to take that step from really good amateur into the ranks of the pros.
One last geeky book. As I got serious about my photography again, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of photographer I was and what I wanted my photography to be. I kept coming back to two things — Nature photography and having that photography displayed on walls; fine art photography. Printing your photographs becomes an art form in itself, which probably has something to do with cutting my teeth in high school in a wet lab darkroom and then being innoculated by Ctein somewhere along the way (seriously: check out his gallery). I ended up getting an HP B9180 printer, which I’m pretty happy with (although my next high-end printer will probably be an Epson), but once you step out of the world of “we’ll take care of it for you” printers on standard glossy paper, it gets really complicated and ugly really fast.
Fortunately, I ran into the book Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers from Rocky Nook. I’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of Rocky Nook books in general, but this book did a great job of helping me through the learning curve of understanding how to control the printer and adjust the image to the paper — and what kinds of paper to experiment with and take advantage of to show off a print to best effect (for what it’s worth, I really like Hahnemule papers, but that’s a different posting). This book has paid for itself a couple of times merely from reduced frustration — but it’s also saved me a lot of time and money in reducing how many tests I make on a print, saving lots on ink and paper wastage. If this is the direction you’re thinking of going, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Finally, a couple of nice content-oriented books.
Joe McNally’s The Moment It Clicks is in many ways an episodic memoir of his photography (if you’re not reading his blog, you should). He talks about many of his photographs, including some that I’m sure will make you go “Oh, HE took that!”, and about why he did what he did and the underlying philosophy. It’s a great book for getting inside the head of a photographer and seeing how he sees an image and then goes out and creates it. It’s not too geeky in the gory details, but if you work through the tutorials and content on Strobist, you’ll be able to understand what McNally is doing and translate it into your own work. One thing that attracts me to this is that McNally’s strengths are very different than the kinds of photography I do, and because of that, I’ve found it helped me see how to work in those new areas and extend my own range and capabilities. A book I really, really enjoyed reading.
Finally, I first ran into photographer Harold Davis via his blog Photoblog 2.0, and the technical quality and imagery vision he showed blew me away. He’s not only an accomplished nature photographer but does some stunning studio work. His book Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers is a great work if you’re trying to learn the techniques that will grow your skill from “that’s a good shot” to “this is the best possible shot”; if you’re someone who’s shifting from trusting the camera’s program mode to telling the camera what you want, Davis does a good job of discussing things like using Aperture or Shutter mode (and why you want to), adjusting exposure and white balance, taking advantage (or minimizing the damage from) existing light conditions, and using (and sometimes abusing) exposure adjustments to create specific effect. He’s a master at using studio lighting and exposure modifications to create interesting effects with flowers, and he’s also a master at near-zero-light long-exposure work, so he pushes the envelope in all directions, and this book is a nice glimpse into how he constructs those images and full of tips that’ll help you adapt his techniques into your work.
This article was posted on Chuq Von Rospach, Photographer and Author at A few of my favorite Photography books. This article is copyright 2013 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.