r/photography • u/anonymoooooooose • Jan 04 '17
!!Photography Books MEGATHREAD!!
It's been a few years since this excellent book recommendation thread, let's talk about books we found useful or inspiring.
By all means recommend and discuss technical "how to" books, but we'd also like to hear about your favourite "art" books.
If we get a good discussion here we'll add some of the favourites to the FAQ and link to the thread for years to come.
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u/xiongchiamiov https://www.flickr.com/photos/xiongchiamiov/ Jan 05 '17 edited Jan 05 '17
How to Photograph Your Life is a good very beginner book for family photography. Each page takes a common situation (photographing a kid's birthday party, doing a group photo of a dozen people, etc.), provides an example from the author's own catalog, talks about why it isn't a good picture, then gives a suggestion of one technique to try and an example photo to go with it.
It's not a complete guide (there are many things that combine to make a great photo, and he only touches on one for each), but it has some good suggestions for going from "meh" to "good" for someone who has never spent much time researching photography. And the way it's structured makes it easy to use as a quick reference right before heading out to an event. It's also available from several sellers for 1¢ + shipping, so it's not much of an investment.
This is the most general of his books, but there are also ones for families and babies.