Best photography lighting books according to redditors
We found 22 Reddit comments discussing the best photography lighting books. We ranked the 15 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 22 Reddit comments discussing the best photography lighting books. We ranked the 15 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
All right, since you said you do photograph events and weddings:
The Luminous Portrait: Capture the Beauty of Natural Light for Glowing, Flattering Photographs
by Elizabeth Messina et al.
Link: http://amzn.com/0817400125
Picture Perfect Posing: Practicing the Art of Posing for Photographers and Models (Voices That Matter)
by Roberto Valenzuela
Link: http://amzn.com/0321966465
Picture Perfect Practice: A Self-Training Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Taking World-Class Photographs (Voices That Matter)
by Roberto Valenzuela
Link: http://amzn.com/0321803531
These three are from my wishlist. The Valenzuela one on posing comes highly recommended from some of my wedding photographer friends.
If Jose Villa is your thing, he also put out a book:
Fine Art Wedding Photography: How to Capture Images with Style for the Modern Bride
by Jose Villa et al.
Link: http://amzn.com/0817400028
If you might want to expand into boudoir:
The Art of Boudoir Photography: How to Create Stunning Photographs of Women
by Christa Meola
Link: http://amzn.com/0321862708
if you're in the US: 90% of what you're going to see is an ETC something. Otherwise, it's probably a strand or an altman thing.
If you wanna be really on the ball, you can get the photometrics handbook. I'm surprised it's not on your book list.
However, most of it will come with time. It's the easy part. Identifying movers from a distance though... that shit's hard.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
edit: Also, just be aware. The first thing I do when I walk into any theatre or themed environment is I look at what's in the air (and judge them harshly based on it). You'll start to notice repeats.
Straight Life by Art Pepper is the best I've read.
Space Is The Place and Bright Moments and Beneath The Underdog also interesting.
On the other hand, Ben Watson is an idiot.
Always use a cable release, especially one you can lock. Keep notes of your exposures. Try to flag off or frame out lights directly in the scene, but sometimes those can't be avoided, or they're what you want to catch anyways. If a car drives by, you might want to cover up your lens, then add on that amount of time to the end of the exposure (again, unless you want the car in there).
Are you processing and printing yourself? Overexpose and underdevelop. I usually overexposed by 1 stop, then underdeveloped by about 25%. This will allow you to keep detail in your highlights. Keep notes of this, as well. Keep detailed notes of your printing processes, too. I drew diagrams of where I dodged and burned, which enlarger I used, filter settings, everything.
Here's some of the long exposure stuff I got. All shot on BW film (usually Ilford HP5) on a Hasselblad.
A good book that taught me a lot of this is here. It's a little old-fashioned nowadays, but it worked for me.
Also, if you have a digital camera, experiment.
Okay, I am in a very good position to answer this. I too have a SL1 but I am in a sea & sea housing with 2 YS-d1's. I too am currently on a dive vacation, I am in Bonaire leaving Saturday.
I first shot the SL1 with the kit lens then moved to the canon 60 mm macro. FYI-I bought it used on MPB.com.
The biggest factor in the 60mm macro, is the focus speed, you press halfway and it keeps up with a little mantis shrimp moving around. It is lighting fast and super reactive and worth the price if you want really nice macro shots. I am not 100% sure but to me most of what you are shooting are not really macro, a little more of a medium distance. Do know if you do the 60 MM you may have some difficulty with the medium distance shots. You will only be a be able to do close macro.
I generally stay at 1/125-1/200, f8-f11, ISO100 and use the TTL function on the strobes and almost every shot comes out great. Shoot in raw and do as little post processing as you can. Look at some books, Here are my two favorite:
Alex Mustard, Martin Edge
Here are some shots from my last two weeks of diving with my SL1 and 60mm Macro.
My Shots
there's a few books available on Amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/Engagement-Portraiture-Techniques-Digital-Photographers/dp/1608952274/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347379812&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Engagement-Photography-ebook/dp/B00540P984/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1347379812&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Engagement-Photography-Photographing/dp/0817400095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347379812&sr=8-1&keywords=portraits+couple+engagement
Artificial Lighting for Photography has been really helpful for me. It was written by one of my professors and he made it to present lighting in a really simple manner. There are lots of process photos of both the equipment and the subject. All the text is super simple to understand.
I believe I have seen this shot in a book called The Backpacker's Photography Handbook. Should be able to confirm later today after I get home.
Jose Villa - Fine Art Wedding Photography is really great. Since he shoots film it references a lot of film settings but it is still very relevant to digital.
It does help. I wasn't the biggest fan of Sun Ra until I read [John Szwed's biography] (http://www.amazon.com/Space-Is-The-Place-Lives/dp/0306808552). That allowed me to get to know more about him and some of his music that I may never have gotten to. I'm still not an avid fan, but I've got a handful of his records that I dig.
I got the dummy book for my camera, and love it. So definitely give this a shot to get out of trial and error shooting.
This looks promising as well.
This may be another one to help get past the trial and error and help you understand more what you are doing.
This is one on my list because exposure can make or break a good photo.
This may help with your environmental/landscape photography.
And finally, this may help you challenge yourself to shoot things you wouldn't think of shooting normally, which will help you get better.
So hopefully some of those help you find what you are looking to do! :)
Congratulations! What is your new job? I like your silly face :)
[Here is my entry :F] (http://imgur.com/a/td7IZ)
Woot Friday
I liked this book a lot:
Available Light: Photographic Techniques for Using Existing Light Sources.
It adresses advanced beginners. It doesn't explain you what aperture and depth of field is for the tenth time, but also doesn't go over the top and compares studio equipment that an amateur on a budget wouldn't buy anyway.
This book really did improve my photography and I can recommend it.
I always think that the best part about being underwater is the view. Why not bring it to him.
A couple books he might get a kick out of:
The Underwater Museum
Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds
Underwater Photography Masterclass
Marine Biology Coloring Book, because you're never too old to color.
If he likes red wine, a nice decanter might go a long way.
Maybe one of those might work?
This book is the best resource I've found to date for learning about HDR photography. It's very thorough but also very easy to follow. The author has a firm grasp on the science as well as the patience to put concepts in simple terms.
When I said "HDR environment" I was referring to the bit depth of the file you merged the images in. You can make a 32bit file into an 8bit file but an 8bit file does not magically become a 32bit file. Not to drive this into the ground but HDR reduced to LDR even while maintaining local contrast is still LDR and not HDR. As far as outputting in HDR, there are a number HDR image formats. Radiance (.hdr) and OpenEXR (.exr) are the two most common. When I said "outputting in HDR" I meant outputting in HDR.
The technical definition for HDR is that it must have a very high contrast between the lightest value and the darkest value, much higher than a standard display or piece of photo paper. That's about as precise as it gets. Unfortunately there is no established contrast ratio threshold that defines an image as HDR or not. Instead HDR imaging is better defined as a type of photography and graphics format unlimited in it's ability to capture and store contrast and color data, pushing digital beyond film once and for all in terms of capture ability.
http://www.amazon.com/Direction-Quality-Light-Portrait-Photography-ebook/dp/B00C4GRGQY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412024128&sr=8-1&keywords=neil+van+niekerk
http://www.amazon.com/-Camera-Techniques-Digital-Portrait-Photography/dp/1584282584/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1412024128&sr=8-3&keywords=neil+van+niekerk
http://www.amazon.com/Off-Camera-Flash-Techniques-Digital-Photographers-ebook/dp/B0051B67H8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1412024128&sr=8-4&keywords=neil+van+niekerk
I would recommend Syl Arena's Lighting for Digital Photography and Neil van Nierkerk's Direction and Quality of Light (his website is where I primarily send flash newbs to learn the baby steps of on-camera flash and bouncing before throwing them to the Strobist's Lighting 101 or his Lynda courses for off-camera flash; my public library gives me free access to lynda.com). Also, just for the fun of it and to start thinking about studio lighting, I'd also recommend taking a spin through Zack Arias's white seamless tutorial on youtube.
The basic college textbook on lighting is Light, Science & Magic.
Biographies and autobiographies are the way to go, I think – there's simply too much to write a book about everyone at once, not to mention the story of jazz is really the sum of intersecting individual journeys and solos, not some kind of burgeoning volksgeist. I recommend Miles and Space is the Place