10 Best Photography Reference Books

Why be a good photographer when you can be a great one! This guide will help you use your digital camera to its full potential in just 20 weeks. This modular photography course is the ultimate master class in digital photography. Using a combination of tutorials, step-by-step demonstrations, practical assignments, and fun Q&As, you’ll go from photography novice to pro in no time. Build your photography and image-editing skills with this comprehensive course that guides you through every aspect of digital photography. From conveying movement and using natural light, to understanding exposure and mastering composition, this book will teach you how to take professional-looking pictures you’ll be proud to display. Packed with helpful advice and stunning images, this one-on-one learning program is a great resource for people who want to take photography more seriously. Learn about the different modes on bridge and system cameras (DSLR or mirrorless), and demystify digital photography jargon such as aperture, exposure, shutter speed, and depth-of-field. This photography book will show you how to control and understand every element of your camera. With the aid of simple text and innovative graphics, you’ll explore a wide variety of photography skills and genres. Find out how to create landscapes, portraits, still life, and action shots as you discover the full range of your camera. Master the Art of Photography in As Little As 20 Weeks Digital Photography Complete Course teaches you everything you need to know about photography in 20 weeks through easy-to-understand tutorials. The program is completely customizable to your schedule, so you can work through the modules at your own pace. It’s also an especially thoughtful gift for aspiring photographers. This digital photography course will guide you through every aspect of digital photography: • Interactive and user-friendly with 20 different modules. • Combines practical demonstrations, step-by-step tutorials, and creative assignments. • Packed with no-nonsense advice and stunning images.

For digital camera and smartphone users, this easy how-to guide, written by an experienced National Geographic photographer, imparts the essentials of taking great pictures. This entertaining book from beloved National Geographic photographer and Photo Ark founder Joel Sartore shows aspiring photographers how to take great pictures, from framing and F-stops to editing and archiving. Whether you’re using your phone or a DSLR camera, you’ll learn the fundamentals of photography–and how to put them to work every day. In a series of short lessons, Sartore explains the basics, from choosing a camera and gear to understanding focus, exposure, composition, and lighting. Using examples from his own work, he applies the basic rules of photography to family, pet, travel, nature, and street photos, and how to get a great shot with the camera on your smartphone. Throughout the book you’ll find pro tips, quick assignments, and the behind- the-camera stories of great photographs; helpful notes clarify how to use every piece of advice with your smartphone camera. Fun and informative, this practical book will be your gateway to taking great pictures.

Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs is ideal for the new wave of snapshooters using DSLR, compact system and bridge cameras, looking for top photography tips. • A bestselling photography book with over 300,000 copies sold! • Learn top photography tips from 50 famous photographers • A must-have guide for amateur photographers and professional photographers Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs contains no graphs, no techie diagrams and no camera-club jargon. Instead, it inspires readers through iconic images and playful copy, packed with hands-on tips. Split into five sections, the book covers composition, exposure, light, lenses and the art of seeing. Masterpieces by acclaimed photographers – including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastiao Salgado, Fay Godwin, Nadav Kander, Daido Moriyama and Martin Parr – serve to illustrate points and encourage readers to try out new ideas. Today’s aspiring photographers want immediacy and see photography as an affordable way of expressing themselves quickly and creatively. This handbook meets their needs, teaching them how to take photographs using professional techniques. Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs is part of the internationally-bestselling ‘Read This’ series, which has sold over half-a- million books worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages. More titles in the ‘Read This’ series: Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll (9781780676241) Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places by Henry Carroll (9781780679051) Use This if You Want to Take Great Photographs: A Photo Journal by Henry Carroll (9781780678887) Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786270542) Use This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786274052) Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing People by Selwyn Leamy (9781786275127) Read This if You Want to Be a Great Writer by Ross Raisin (9781786271976) Read This if You Want to Be Instagram Famous edited by Henry Carroll (9781780679679) Read This If You Want to Be YouTube Famous by Will Eagle (9781786275134)

All you need is a digital camera and this bestselling book to unlock your full potential as a photographer! This handbook will help you improve your skills, give you a fresh perspective on how to approach a shoot, and which equipment will work best. If you have a burst of inspiration and ideas for new projects, this must-have will guide you through every step. Achieve stunning results with this expert advice on everything from how to choose the right equipment and aperture exposure, to image enhancement and flash. This comprehensive guide is a trusted resource and an ideal starting point. Written for beginners, this photography book is easy to read and understand, even if you have never worked with a camera before. It has step-by-step tutorials covering the whole range of camera functions and photographic techniques. Each chapter of the book is full of practical hands-on projects and tutorials that will help you get the best from your camera. At-a-glance comparison images show how camera settings can produce remarkably different pictures. The results are shown side-by-side with each technique, along with the setting used to create a particular look or effect. You’ll also learn how to enhance your images using a range of innovative ideas adopted by professionals. Go from Novice to Pro Photographer in a Flash It has been fully updated to reflect all the latest developments in technology and creative trends in digital image-making. This manual will teach you all the tips and techniques you need to ensure that your memorable moments are captured perfectly every time! The Beginner’s Photography Guide will help you find your inner photographer: • Takes you through every technique you need to create stunning images. • Easy-to-follow layout and step-by-step and tutorials. • Handy checklists with a quick rundown of the equipment and camera settings. • Hundreds of inspirational images to motivate you to reach your goal.

This newly revised edition of Bryan Peterson’s most popular book demystifies the complex concepts of exposure in photography, allowing readers to capture the images they want. Understanding Exposure has taught generations of photographers how to shoot the images they want by demystifying the complex concepts of exposure in photography. In this newly updated edition, veteran photographer Bryan Peterson explains the fundamentals of light, aperture, and shutter speed and how they interact with and influence one another. With an emphasis on finding the right exposure even in tricky situations, Understanding Exposure shows you how to get (or lose) sharpness and contrast in images, freeze action, and take the best meter readings, while also exploring filters, flash, and light. With all new images, as well as an expanded section on flash, tips for using colored gels, and advice on shooting star trails, this revised edition will clarify exposure for photographers of all levels.

When photographing people, you can have a great composition, perfect light, and the right camera settings, but if your subject doesn’t look right―if the pose is off―the shot will not be a keeper. Posing is truly a crucial skill that photographers need to have in order to create great photographs. If you’re looking to improve your ability to pose your subjects―whether they’re men, women, couples, or groups―best-selling author and photographer Lindsay Adler’s The Photographer ‘s Guide to Posing: Techniques to Flatter Everyone is the perfect resource for you. In the first half of The Photographer ‘s Guide to Posing, Lindsay discusses how the camera sees, and thus how camera angle, lens choice, and perspective all affect the appearance of your subject. Lindsay then covers the five most important things that ruin a pose―such as placement of the hands, and your subject’s expression and posture. If you can look out for and avoid these five things, your skills (and your images) will quickly improve. Next, Lindsay dives into “posing essentials,” outlining her approach to start with a “base pose,” then build on that to create endless posing opportunities. She also discusses posing the face―with specific sections dedicated to the chin, jaw, eyes, and forehead―as well as posing hands. In the second half of the book, Lindsay dedicates entire chapters to posing specific subject matter: women, men, couples, curvy women, families and small groups, and large groups. In each chapter, Lindsay addresses that subject matter’s specific challenges, provides five “go-to poses” you can always use, and covers how to train the eye to determine the best pose for your subject(s). In the final chapter of the book, Lindsay brings it all together as she teaches you how to analyze a pose so that you can create endless posing opportunities and continuously improve your work

Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout–involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis–in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote. For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day ‘s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict –and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino–Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.

This is an updated and newly revised edition of the classic book The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression. Originally published in 1994 and first revised in 2010, The Art of Photography has sold well over 100,000 copies and has firmly established itself as the most readable, understandable, and complete textbook on photography. Featuring nearly 200 beautiful photographs in both black-and-white and color, as well as numerous charts, graphs, and tables, this book presents the world of photography to beginner, intermediate, and advanced photographers who seek to make a personal statement through the medium of photography.Without talking down to anyone or talking over anyone’s head, renowned photographer, teacher, and author Bruce Barnbaum presents how-to techniques for both traditional and digital approaches. In this newest edition of the book, Barnbaum has included many new images and has completely revised the text, with particular focus on two crucial chapters covering digital photography: he revised a chapter covering the digital zone system, and includes a brand-new chapter on image adjustments using digital tools. There is also a new chapter discussing the concepts of “art versus technique” and “traditional versus digital” approaches to photography. Throughout the book, Barnbaum goes well beyond the technical, as he delves deeply into the philosophical, expressive, and creative aspects of photography so often avoided in other books.Barnbaum is recognized as one of the world’s finest landscape and architectural photographers, and for decades has been considered one of the best instructors in the field of photography. This latest incarnation of his textbook―which has evolved, grown, and been refined over the past 45 years―will prove to be an ongoing, invaluable photographic reference for years to come. It is truly the resource of choice for the thinking photographer.Topics include: • Elements of Composition • Visualization • Light and Color • Filters • Black-and-White • The Digital Zone System • The Zone System for Film • Printing and Presentation • Exploding Photographic Myths • Artistic Integrity • Realism, Abstraction, and Art • Creativity and Intuition • A Personal Philosophy • And much, much more…

The modern classic, completely updated. The newest edition of The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide includes the latest data and answers the questions most often asked by home astronomers, from beginners to experienced stargazers. Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer provide expert guidance on the right types of telescopes and other equipment; photographing the stars through a telescope; and star charts, software and other references. They cover daytime and twilight observing, planetary and deep-sky observing, and much more. With over 500 color photographs and illustrations, The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide is one of the most valuable, beautiful and user-friendly astronomy books ever produced. New and updated for this edition: * A 20-page full-color Atlas of the Milky Way provides location and context for hundreds of celestial objects mentioned throughout the book. * A chapter on Astrophotography with Digital Cameras specifies what equipment works best and how to use it to collect a color gallery of celestial portraits. * Telescopes for Recreational Astronomy features assessments of a wide range of new telescopes, from models for beginners to those for veteran astronomy enthusiasts, with special emphasis on computerized telescopes and how they work. * Accessory Catalog spotlights the best of the accessories and flags the frivolous and irrelevant. * Three practical appendices : Polar Aligning Your Telescope; Optics Cleaning and Collimation; Testing Your Telescope Optics. Any serious home astronomer must have this superb guide as an ongoing reference.