Photography Books

The good folks at Amazon love to send me emails with recommended books to purchase. Their suggestions, of course, are often based on purchases I've already made with them. I suppose, in Amazon's mind, if I bought one book on a given subject, I might be interested in just about any book that is similar to the book I've already purchased. That seems logical. And who can argue with Amazon's phenomenal success?

Unfortunately for Amazon, because I bought one book doesn't mean I'm interested in other books that are somewhat similar. If I buy a book as a gift for someone, one that I'm pretty sure will interest whoever I'm buying the book for, it doesn't automatically mean I'm interested in other books that are similar to the book I purchased. Thankfully, Amazon doesn't abuse my email address: They don't get carried away sending me scads of emails with purchase recommendations.

The other day, though, Amazon sent me a book link to a title that has captured my interest and I think I'm going to purchase it. It's called GIRLS, MONEY & SEXY SNAPS: What really happens when a girl strips naked for a photographer?

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, it should be fairly obvious why I might be interested in this book: I make my living shooting girls who strip naked for photographers. And while I could probably write my own book about what really happens (and, dammit, doesn't happen) when girls strip naked for photographers--I've shot many, many of them--this title's description still captures my interest. I wonder if any of you have read this book? If so, I'd love to hear a few words about it in the comments section.

Last week, I was rummaging through my storage room--it's in one of those monthly-fee storage facilities--and I came across a box that contained a bunch of my photography-related books. I hadn't seen them since I gave up the studio. I was pretty jazzed about finding my photo books and I scooped them up and brought them home.

Having, once again, convenient access to my photography books has me thumbing through them regularly... again. It's interesting that the books I've always thought of as the the most useful in my collection still remain, in my mind, the most useful.

Photographing People: Portraits, Fashion, Glamour still tops my list as a creative and practical lighting guide. It's a cool book with tons of great images plus, and this is a big plus, easy-to-understand lighting diagrams and descriptions for each of the images. The book isn't so much for beginners as it it is for those who already have a decent understanding of both studio and location lighting techniques. As such, it doesn't spend time rehashing the basics which many shooters are already aware of, and have gone past, in their photography evolution. Instead, it cuts right to the chase with its diagrams and descriptions of how various shooters achieved the images included in the book. And some of those photographic images are truly outstanding!

Another book I'm quite fond of is Scott Kelby's The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers. This is a really practical photoshop guide with easy-to-use techniques for improving one's images in post. The edition I have was published before Photoshop CS2 and CS3 were released and, as such, it doesn't include the new tools included in Photoshop's latest iterations of its venerable image processor. (I believe there's a new edition that targets CS2 and maybe even CS3.) But it works for me! I'm a PS/CS user and haven't yet upgraded to either CS2 or CS3.

Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies is another excellent and wonderful guidebook and I refer to it often enough to more than justify its purchase. Personally, though, I prefer books that stick to one subject--like either lighting or post-processing--than books that try to cover too much ground.

I suppose much of the information found in the pages of many "how to" photography books can be located, for free, on the web. But there's something about having actual books in a personal, library that I find more helpful and more satisfying. Personally, I don't think the web will ever fully replace "hard" copies of books, leastwise I hope it never does. Yeah, I have a few e-books on my hard drive but, for whatever reason, they don't seem like much of an exciting part my personal library.

The pretty girl at the top is Aurora who, by the way and just to be a name-dropper, has worked with Markus Klinko & Indrani, a wildly successful photography team whom I'm a big fan of. MUA was Vera. I photographed Aurora this past Sunday and I'll be featuring a few more images from the shoot in upcoming blog updates... I'm pretty happy with some of the images that resulted from my shoot with Aurora.