Reviews from our own photography book collection

All of these reviews are based on books we've purchased for our own use and consider them worthy of your interest. We promise we won't ever recommend a turkey to you!
Click on book title below to jump straight to its review.

Waiting for the Light - a book on Landscape Photography by David Noton

"Waiting for the Light" is a breathtaking visual celebration of David Noton's work to date as one of the world's finest landscape photographers. It is a long-awaited exploration of David's images, showcasing the very best from his extensive global portfolio, with photographs from every continent.

The accompanying text places an emphasis on his use of light, and his ability to capture the essence of a place through outstanding landscape photography. David offers amateurs and professionals inspirational and practical advice on how to achieve this in their own work.

It contains an invaluable chapter exploring the impact that transferring David's workflow from traditional to digital has had on his working practices and output. Beautifully displayed images combined with explanatory captions and practical, revealing text, make this an indispensable must-have for any photographer.

REVIEWS OF DAVID'S BOOK
Wanderlust: Waiting for the light isn't just a showcase of Noton's best work. Through a series of essays, detailed captions, commentary on his own shots, diary entries and a gallery section. Noton shares his know-how, and explains how to truly capture the essence of a scene. --Wanderlust
RPS Journal: The essence of the book is about how photographers use their eyes, how you develop a photograph with vision. One of my longest standing clients is The National Trust, that dates right back to 1985. --RPS Journal
Practical Photography: One of the best landscapers in the world. noton's inimitably dry wit shines through in his photo essays, captions and diary entries, and whether you're a landscaper or a travel photographer at heart, David's work is never less than exemplary. Highly recommended. --Practical Photography

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Contemporary Wedding Photography

Today's wedding photography has to tell a story and capture the emotions and atmosphere of the day in a natural, photojournalistic style. This user-friendly manual reveals the techniques necessary to shoot in this contemporary style, whether for professional photographers looking to update their methods or aspiring photographers wanting to break into this high-end market.

Wedding photography is one of the most lucrative areas for professional and aspiring photographers and all photographers must master the less formal contemporary style of wedding photography to win clients

This comprehensive guide:

• Guarantees successful shooting by using comprehensive checklists, professional tips, proven templates and step-by-step photographs
• Includes advice on pre-wedding planning, presentation of images to the couple and everything in between
• Inspires achievement in photographers of all levels through the authors' inimitable shooting style An A to Z directory of professional tips makes vital knowledge easy to find.
• Essential Know-How for a New Era in Wedding Photography
  

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Professional Wedding Photography

Have you ever wondered why some wedding photographers succeed, when many others fail? Why some prosper, while others struggle to make a profit? Or how some can retire young, while others can never afford to stop? In this book, Damien Lovegrove shares with you the secrets of fusing art with commerce and gives you the vital tools needed for great achievement.

This guide is packed with over four hundred pictures all with their own tales to inspire and inform. It provides a simple yet profoundly powerful recipe for success, both for photographers just starting out and seasoned wedding pros alike.

• Discover how to master every aspect of photographing a wedding
• Develop your style, and learn new shooting techniques
• Understand how to read and use light quickly and effectively
• Get to grips with selling, marketing, postproduction and product design
• Improve your customer experience and increase your product value
• Manage your time and become a more effective photographer
• Learn financial mastery and how to avoid financial misery
• Fast track your career and unleash your potential
• Reveals all the secrets and systems required by wedding photographers to make a good profit
• Shows how these wedding photographers have chosen a few rules to consistently use, and explaines how everything follows from consitent choices and decisions. Invaluable reference for all aspiring wedding photographers
• 300 color and black and white images detailing the technical information of the sho

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Organizing and Editing Your Photos with Picasa

Those of you who have taken our Beginners Digital Photography Course will know our views on Picasa. Even if this was not a free programme it would be well worth the money. We think it is so good that we even recommend it to professional photographers looking for a fast, elegant solution to keeping track of hundreds and thousands of images (Picasa download here).

As Mac users ourselves we are desperately disappointed that Picasa does not run on Apple Mac Computers. Although Macs come with a neat little photo programme called "iPhoto" it pales in comparison with Picasa.

Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures in seconds and sorts them into albums. From there, you can apply basic edits to your photos, burn them to CD, post them on your blog, or email them to friends. Many features of Picasa require little or no instruction, it makes editing and sharing your images with others so easy it is amazing.

While many of the things Picasa can are immediately obvious, in this book the author, Steve Schwartz, shows you how to properly organise, view, and edit your photos, and then shows you how to use Picasa's built-in tools to print, email, or order professional prints of your images.

A great feature of the book is the full-page, full-color screen shots and simple, step-by-step instructions which lead readers through several projects, such as using your personal photos as your own desk-top picture, creating a screensaver, making movies, generating photo-based Web pages, running a slideshow, and creating posters, collages, and contact sheets.

If there is one downside to the book it is that it was written for the previous version of Picasa. I don't feel that this is a major problem though, as very little changed in the current version apart from a little sprucing up of how it looks on screen. If you have broadband, then you probably have the latest version (Picasa checks each time you launch it), dial-up modem users may not. The way to know if you have the latest version is to look for a "Web Albums" button on the bottom.

If you'd like to get more out of Picasa then this book is well worth the investment.

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Photoshop CS2: Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks

While doing research for our Photoshop Courses we had cause to go through a lot of books on Photoshop to recommend to our students. We found it hard to tie down books that did not assume either a prior knowledge of Photoshop or that the reader was trying to become a professional user.

Then we came across ""Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks in Photoshop CS2". What we liked about this book is that it takes a task-oriented approach to ease the reader into the myriad of commands available in Photoshop.

Bill Gates once said that "95% of people use 5% of Microsoft Word". If applied to the dazzling array of options in Photoshop that surely has to come closer to 99% to 1%! With this book it is very possible increase your knowledge of not only how Photoshop's works, but why you would use a particular technique when there seems to be 3 or 4 ways of doing the same thing.

This book helps you on the basis of two-page tutorials with step-by-step screen shots that show you easy techniques and tricks that can be applied to your photos in Photoshop CS2. Even if you only have CS1, this book will translate really well for you, Adobe don't change Photoshop that much from version to version - the core remains the same and has done for many years now.

If you're knew to Photoshop then this book will really help you to edit and correct your photos to a very high standard. Even if you've been tricking around in Photoshop for a while, but still aren't sure how to get it to do what you know it can, then this book is also for you.

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