Best Books
Photography is of course a life time of learning if you wish it to be. Here is a list of some of the books I have found really useful. I use them myself and recommend them to those I teach.
The Moment It Clicks
This is the first of Joe McNally's two awesome books. Joe is really at the top of his game and this book will be as enjoyable to the non-photographers in the family as it is instructive and inspirational to the photographers.
Packed with fabulous pictures, hilarious anecdotes and instructional tips told with a fluency that only a master can achieve, this is a thoroughly enjoyable book.
Check out the NASA Shuttle Launch story. I laughed out loud...it's a real belly laugh.
The Hot Shoe Diaries
The second of Joe McNally's books (the other being The Moment It Clicks), this book provides a thorough treatment of just what you can do with modern speedlights. With recent developments in speedlight technology you can carry a complete mobile studio around in something no bigger than a small camera bag and totally battery driven.
Of course you've got to know what you're doing and this book provides a thoroughly entertaining way to learn from one of the World's masters when it comes to lighting for portraiture.
The book covers what kit is required and when to use it. Got up for a portrait at sunrise but the sun didn't come out? Joe's got the answer. Using bounce flash under flourescent lighting and turned everybody's face green? Joe's got the answer.
The Digital Photography Book (Volume 1)
This book is one of the best "get you started and start to get some quick and quality results" book. These two books cover the major types of photography most people would be interested in using a easy to digest, light-hearted no-nonsense approach.
It is one page per technique with a photo at the top of the page and description at the bottom.
In this totally digestable way Scott shows you how to take pin-sharp shots, shoot flowers, weddings, landscapes, sports, people, travel and cities.
The Digital Photography Book (Volume 2)
The second of Scott Kelby's terrific starter books. Following on from Volume 1 in the same light-hearted, detailed but digestable approach, Scott covers other types of photography not covered in Volume 1 as well as re-visiting some of the others providing even more great tips.
Having both volumes provides an excellent starters handbook.
This volume covers using flash, building a studio, close-up photography and re-visits in more depth portraits, landscapes, weddings and travel.
Understanding Exposure
This is a fantastic book written by Bryan Peterson who is an acclaimed lecturer in photography and his fluent style and structured approach is testimony to this.
The first things he does is make us take our first exposure in manual mode. Then he gets us to take six different exposures for every shot we take, from long shutter speeds with small apertures, to wide-open with fast shutter speeds and everything in between. They all have the same brightness but they all have different artistic values. He then spends the rest of the book explaining when we would use each of the six exposure options available to each of us every time we press the shutter release.
There is also some really interesting observations on how to expose for different situations. As well as the well discussed "lots of white" and "lots of black" situations, he also gives valuable instruction on when the subject is predominantly green, or there is a totally blue sky, or a sunset over water, or city lights as dusk.
This is a great read and a fantastic instruction for anybody wanting to get into photography in a way that is more rewarding than shooting on auto.
The Greatest Photography Tips in the World
This little book punches so much above its weight. It is a little A5-sized hardback and is less than 200 pages, but Alistair Scott is so economic with his words every page is packed with vital tips.
When I first saw the book I thought it was just another how-to-do-everything book for the person who has just gone out and bought themselves an expensive camera, but this is so much more.
At first I thought the title might have over-sold it, but these tips really are top-notch. The page that sold it for me was the one that told you to include a "heartbeat" in every shot when possible. By that Alistair means a human or an animal - whatever the size. To illustrate the point he has two identical shots of a great landscape, one with a tiny silhouetted man and one without. The one with was so much more powerful.
Understand why more mega-pixels isn't the whole story. Get great tips on composition, landscapes, portraits, sports, looking after your kit and making money from your photography.
Enjoy! This is a great little book for all levels. There's top stuff in here.
LIGHT - Science and Magic
An Introduction to Photographic Lighting
Learning about light is almost more important than learning to drive your camera. You can put your camera into automatic but unless you've got the right light your camera is dead in the water. In fact some people say that you get more "bang for your buck" by spending your money on lighting and light modifiers than anything else. i.e. buying reflectors, diffusers, speedlights/strobes, snoots and speedstraps etc will make a bigger difference to your shots than spending the same amount on bigger and better cameras and lenses.
Which ever way you look at it, learning about light is right up there on the "really need to know" list. Learn about how the following affects your shots: size of the light source, its distance from the subject, the type of reflection (direct, diffuse or polarising), the distance of the camera to the subject.
This beautifully written book covers illustrates how this way of thinking about light helps you with your product photography, portraits, architectural as well as dealing easily with such challenging subjects as metals and glass.