TP: Which photography book?

personally i've recently bought a tom ang book, primarily for specific techniques.

Eve Arnold in retrosect is an excellent read and has fantastic pictures.

Anything from magnum gets my vote.

plus i've picked up several old British Journal of Photography from the 60's with stuff by don mccullin and others.

I also like manray and have several books with his work in.

Since they haven't been listed yet, I really liked these two books by Bryan Peterson: (amazon links included)

Understanding Exposure
Learning to see creatively

BP is a commercial stock photographer, so he's focussing on pictures with high "Ken Rockwell" content, but that doesn't mean that you can't pick up a lot from these two books. He's also clueless about digital photography, so avoid his Understanding Digital Photography like the plague.

And Gary Friedman, I know you're reading this: you really should consider "going mainstream" with your books. I can recommend any of his e-books, content and value-for-money wise!

Regards,
Bart

I can't believe nobody has mentioned Understanding exposure by : Brian Peterson. This is a excellent book for beginners! It covers aperture,shutter speed,Iso, ect. On a simple basis with assignments to follow along with while reading it. Everybody I know who has read this book has improved there photography 100% he has 3 other books out also Understanding digital is not one to read because it is very outdated!

brettania wrote: Happy Hour wrote: I can't believe nobody has mentioned Understanding exposure by : Brian Peterson. and from two posts above Diddlbiker wrote: Since they haven't been listed yet, I really liked these two books by Bryan Peterson: (amazon links included) Understanding Exposure Learning to see creatively I use lens cleaning cloths for my glasses too.

Haha I guess i missed that one! funny since it was right on top of mine!LOL

One that I liked that I read a couple years ago was Leonard Lee Rue's How I Photograph Wildlife and Nature. It was written many years ago, but I found it a very enjoyable read. It is linked to Amazon.

Edited by ferretracer - 26 September 2008 at 19:14

I was looking for something similar lately (a book to make my pictures better and not a book about basics of apertures, depths of field, shutter speeds and something like that).
I was thinking that no one can teach me (or anyone else) to be creative, because creativity is a natural gift. So I was looking for a book that shows good pictures and have a small story on the side to tell what exactly the photographer thought when he took the picture, and maybe some short comments about how to get it (in case that you need to be creative to get the pciture and solve the technical problems...). Unfortunately, I was aware of this thread when I was looking...

I found The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally to be something like I was looking for. Picture and a story about the things that led to the picture. I don't think it is a brilliant book, but it is quite nice. Although most of the pictures are just impossible for amateur like me, I still learned alot. However, I don't like that he is using an American slang, which makes it anooting for non-american guy like me.

"Photography and the Art of Seeing" by Freeman Patterson is one of an excellent series of books by this Canadian author. Freeman tended to use a Minolta with just a couple of zooms and his books are very non-technical in nature. (Edit... Freeman is still very much alive, I'm just not sure what he's shooting with these days!)
The focus is generally on landscape and nature photography.
As an artist, I really appreciated his visual thinking in his approach to photography. The books are simple to read with great shots and explanations of what makes them work.

(Edit... as well as the two additional books noted by accady below, there's "Photograpy of Natural Things" by Freeman Patterson.)

Edit: Freeman Patterson's website: http://www.freemanpatterson.com/index.htm

Edited by DavidB - 31 January 2009 at 08:26