I’ve had a lot of folks asking me for book suggestions for photographers this Holiday season, so I thought I’d share a few here (without including mine since since I included a few in my Holiday Gear Guide a few weeks back). So, here’s we go (by the way, these are in no particular order).
> Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends
by Tim Mantoani
Tim did a masterful job with book, which features his portraits of famous photographers holding a print of their favorite image. It’s powerful, it’s an important work, and the portrait and the image they’re holding tell you so much about them. I promise you, the photographer you buy this for will love it!
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> From Oz to Kansas: Almost every black and white conversion technique known to man
by Vincent Versace
This may be the most accurate book title ever! In this follow-up to his bestselling “Return to Oz” Vincent shows Photoshop users a wide range of methods on how to create beautiful black & white images. Very well done from top to bottom; very current, and very useful techniques from a man who really knows how to create the black and white print.
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> Shooting in Sh*tty Light: The Top Ten Worst Photography Lighting Situations and How to Conquer Them
by Lindsay Adler and Erik Valind
I just got to see this book in print last week and I am very impressed. This is such real world stuff because in so many cases we don’t get to dictate when we’re going to shoot or where we’re going to shoot, and this book shows you how to shoot in the harshest lighting situations and come out looking like a star. Great info!
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> The Accurate Color interactive iBook series
By Herb Paynter
Herb is one of the pioneers of working with color and his book is just about the most in-depth book for actually understanding color that I’ve seen a quite a while. The key word here is “in-depth” and although it’s for beginners to color, if the photographer on your gift list really, really wants to “get” color in detail, they’ll get a lot out of it (it has interactive quizzes and other cool features). It’s not so much about Photoshop — but it’s really about understanding color at a level they never thought they would.
Get it at Apple’s iBook store for IOS devices
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> APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book
By Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch
This book was just released this week and I think this will be an absolute boon to photographers who have always dreamed of publishing their own “Coffee-table” book (or any other kind for that matter). Guy’s a brilliant mega-bestselling business author and Shawn’s a brilliant app/book designer (and a pretty formidable Black Ops II player) and together they show you exactly how its all done, and give you insights you’re not going to find anywhere else.
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> Sketching Light: An Illustrated Tour of the Possibilities of Flash
By Joe McNally
I don’t know a photographer using small flash that wouldn’t absolutely LOVE to get a Joe McNally book. In fact, I don’t know a photographer period that wouldn’t love one! Sketching Light is filled with Joe’s wonderful stories, amazing examples, very cute and to the point diagrams, and they will absolutely love it — it’s a lock! The book has 57 reviews on Amazon (which is a lot!) and an average rating of 5-stars (which is very rare indeed). Guaranteed to make you holiday gift champion.
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> All Access: Your Backstage Pass to Concert Photography
By Alan Hess
There have been lots of books about shooting concert photography, but never anything like this. It is just so straight to the point, pragmatic, no BS, and it really shows you exactly what to do and how to do it. I really think it’s the new bible of shooting concert photography and if the photographer on your Holiday gift list dreams of shooting shows, this book is the ticket. Very well done with loads of great images, ideas, and hard-learned techniques from a pro who is in the photo pit every week walking the walking. This book rocks! (I’m cool with the pun). ;-)
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OK gang, there ya have it. Now, if you’re thinking “Aw man, Scott I thought surely some of your books should have been included” (OK, that’s really more wishful thinking on my part), well here’s the link to them all on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Yesterday I started a whole “12-days of Christmas” giveaway thingy over on my Google+ page (http://scottgplus.com) and I’ll be giving away something new every day (including my books, apps, DVDs, memberships, and more). Hope you’ll check it out (and I hope you win). :)
I downloaded the “Accurate Color” interactive book sample this morning to my iPad. The audio introduction seemed promising, and then I started reading the few pages that came with the sample. The first page with any real content on it (I think it was page iv; preceding pages were “How to use this book” pages) had three glaring grammatical errors and one slightly less glaring grammatical error. The first error was in the very first sentence, no less. Any editor could have caught these easily.
While I think this book may have potential, these errors scare me off. I wasn’t able to read much past that problem page in the sample, so I’m left wondering: Did this book go through an editing process, or is it a self-published book that is likely to suffer from these same problems throughout the entire book? Before I spend my money on it, I’d seriously like to know what the quality of the complete work is, if anyone can comment on that.
Not to be an a**hole, Eric, but is your company really named “Harmon Photographyy” or is that a spelling error?
Thanks for putting my book on this list. I just finished reading the sh!tty light book. Really good. Going to pick up APE this week and have added the Behind Photographs to my list of books to get ASAP.
Here’s another one for you to consider: Jordan Matter’s “Dancers Among Us”, currently no. 25 on the NY Times best seller list. I had the pleasure of helping Jordan with some of his work while in LA. The concepts and execution are fabulous.
Alan’s “All Access” is awesome! It is without doubt one of the best photography books I have ever read in my life!