I’m getting email from folks who want book suggestions for gifts. I may get time to work on an extensive list, but for now, here are three I like representing three different genres of photography.

My first pick is a book by Rob Sylvan

Taking Stock: Make money in microstock creating photos that sell

Rob Sylvan is a well-known iStock shooter. While this book isn’t about iStock, Rob has taken his experience there and further added to it to explain the current state of the stock photo business.

There are lots of books about the stock photo business and most of them are very outdated and of limited usefulness. Not this book. It is current, relevant and helpful. Worth your time if you want to get into stock shooting.

Next up is a wedding book from Marcus Bell

Master’s Guide to Wedding Photography

Marcus Bell is a very talented and well-known photographer. He’s also known for creating fantastic Photoshop actions and great workflow. What I got from this book was Marcus’ approach to developing a style. It’s not a what camera and f-stop book. It’s a workflow and style book.

Last up is a neat little e-book by my pal Joe Farace

15 Tips For Better Car Photos http://www.stuckincustoms.com/ebook-15-tips-for-better-car-photos/ will set you back less than $10. In return, you’ll get how-to car shooting advice from somebody who has more passion for the subject (cars) than just about anyone I know. Joe’s sample pictures alone are worth the price of the book.

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Author: Michael Freeman

Publisher: Focal Press

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

In the introduction to “The Photographer’s Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos”, Michael Freeman notes that art criticism, photography or otherwise, seldom addresses itself to the practitioners of the particular art, photography or otherwise. He sets himself the ambitious goal of explaining how technique can be used to make a photograph “good” (whatever that means). Although he does not say so, if he could accomplish that task his book would be highly useful not only to photographers, but to viewers of photographs who want to increase their understanding of the art.

He begins his exploration by considering a question that has engaged aestheticians since the time of Plato, “What is beauty?” From this jumping-off point he explores ideas like cliché, and techniques like the reveal, which slowly makes the viewer aware of the subject of a photograph. Fortunately the language he uses is far more accessible than that of, say, Immanuel Kant. Next he moves on to the question of style, which consists of the package of tools a particular photographer uses repeatedly to express his or her vision. He does this by discussing concepts of composition that experienced photographers will be familiar with, like the rule of thirds, but his exploration examines why these concepts work, rather than just describing the concept. This work seems to follow up on the ideas presented in his earlier work, “The Photographer’s Eye” but a prior encounter with that book is not necessary to understand this book. Generally he focuses on techniques that draw the viewer’s attention to the subject of the image. He does discuss styles that vary from the traditional, like what he calls “low graphic style”, and others that characterize the more avant-garde photography of our time. In the final chapter of the book he describes what many photographers call “working the subject”, that is capturing successive images of the subject, each one hoping to improve on the last, or at least, varying the composition from the prior capture. He also examines “the look” of images, concentrating on approaches that have been made easier through digital processing, like hyper-realistic and luminous images.

Ultimately he fails to clarify what makes a photograph “good” and I am not surprised because this seems an almost impossible task. What he does do is to heighten a photographer’s sensitivity to techniques, many of which a photographer may already use. This heightened sensitivity can help the image-smith make an even “better” photograph.

At the risk of criticizing Freeman for not writing the book I would have wished, I think he failed to capitalize on the controversial work of many modern art photographers, like Andreas Gursky or Jeff Wall. It seems to me some further discussion of what makes this kind of work “good”, at least in the eyes of some viewers, might have illuminated the techniques that Freeman discusses, even for those readers who find contemporary art photography unattractive.

Reviews seldom comment on the bibliography of a book that is essentially about technique, but if one pursued the books referenced by Freeman, one could make a significant beginning into applying a more intellectual approach to making photographs. Freeman’s book is certainly a step in that direction.
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Author: Lee Varis

Publisher: Course Technology Cengage Learning

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

Once the setting of aperture, shutter speed and ISO to get an exposure is learned by a photographer, a major problem of exposure is getting the larger range of light seen by the human eye to fit into the more limited range of light seen by a camera, so that the details the eye sees in shadow and bright areas appears as something more than the black and white shown in the image created by the camera. This was the problem that Ansel Adams tried to conquer in the development of the zone system. Many digital photographers are happy just to keep the camera’s histogram to the right and manipulate the sliders in software to recover as much data as possible. In Mastering Exposure and the Zone System for Digital Photographers, Lee Varis offers his somewhat unusual update to the problem.

After a few brief words about workflow and Lightroom software, Varis offers his interpretation of some of Adams’ theory, using a black to white tonal scale. Next he discusses camera tonal calibration so that the photographer can set exposure compensation before taking a single image, and then calibrating Lightroom for accurate colors. In the next chapter he presents several images, some in color and others in black-and-white, with his considerations in selecting his exposure. He follows this with a chapter on post-processing, with a heavy emphasis on using LAB color to create pictures that I would characterize as having a lot of visual “pop”. There is a chapter on High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing which he refers to as the fine art of cheating, and then he finishes with some speculation on what direction photographic technology will take.

Varis is not for beginners. He assumes the reader will know the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO. He assumes the reader will understand what all of the sliders and buttons in Lightroom and Photoshop do. He even assumes the reader will understand the LAB color space, although I confess that I have found understanding this space difficult (and to my way of thinking, not very useful.) The chapter on HDR covers the facilities in Photoshop and Photomatix Pro in a cursory fashion that will not help most people to understand the use of either software, but which Varis uses as a springboard to further application of LAB color.

The way that Varis is not for beginners is typically shown in his discussion of color calibration. The author almost glosses over the fact that each digital camera, even within the same model line, varies slightly in the accuracy of the color it captures, and indeed, there are some colors that it are beyond the capability of many cameras to capture accurately. To compensate for that Adobe in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw provides a color calibration facility. Bit even the profiles provided by Adobe reflect only certain averages for cameras and are not usually accurate for the individual camera. To come as close as possible as the actual color of subjects, Varis recommends calibrating the processing software to the individual camera. (Indeed, for certain uses such as product photography it may even be necessary to calibrate the camera for the individual shoot. That’s why manufacturers like X-rite sell color charts to aid in accurate calibration.)

Most photographers are happy enough with the profiles provided by Adobe, if they even care about calibrating their camera. But for those who do care for a greater degree of accuracy Varis provides instruction in the proper way to color calibrate an individual camera.

Ultimately all of this calibration only moves the image to a few parts of a stop greater range and many photographers may not think it worth the effort. Add to that that Varis occasionally offers unusual advice like setting the contrast slider in Lightroom to zero to start with rather than Adobe’s default setting of 50 and readers may wonder about his advice.

Still there is an audience for this work. The skilled photographer who is not satisfied with the standard RGB color space and is interested in exploring some new techniques which may or may not prove helpful may wish to explore this book.

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Author: Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite et al.

Publisher: Argentum (Aurum Press)

Review by Conrad J. Obregon

I’ve long felt that travel photography doesn’t exist as a separate genre and it’s nice to see that the editor and authors of Travel Photography Masterclass (Light & Land series) agree with me. Instead they feel that travel photography is really several separate genres and they include each as a chapter of their book; the chapters are Landscape, People, Architecture and Nature.

The authors are some of the best photographers in Great Britain, like David Ward, Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and Niall Benvie. Each chapter starts with a brief introduction by the editor, Alisa McWhinnie, followed by a short essay with photographs by one of the authors. The chapters then include a series of pictures by photographers who are unknown to me, and who, I suspect, may be students or workshop participants of the authors. These latter photographers describe their inspiration, the situation when the image was captured, camera data, post-capture work and later reflections. There is a short column of top tips, and then another essay with images, by another author. The images are quite nice but there is little synergistic effect or organization of teaching points from these pictures.

The essays are quite pedestrian. For example, Ward, who has waxed eloquent elsewhere, essentially says that he travels to find something new and that the photographer should be critical of his own work; should keep an open mind; and should match the images to the light. There is nothing of a technical nature, little to help the reader find his vision and even less to inspire. In fact, this book seems less like a class, master or otherwise, and more like a collection of random pictures. The images are excellent but relatively unconnected. Where several images appear in a photo book, I expect them to reinforce each other, and for something beyond the individual image to accrete. That didn’t happen here. Even the top tips are not very significant, like shoot slow for landscape and architecture and shoot fast for portraits and wildlife.

If you hunger for images to look at, this book may be worth purchasing. On the other hand, most of these authors have published other books that deal with the specific areas they write about here that are far better than this, either to appreciate for the images or from which to learn.

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