best books for learning photography

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Hi,

I already have a good foundation in photography from doing an AS level photography course and have learned quite a bit more since. but i would like to further my knowledge and skill level to a professional standard. Please could you tell me of the best books to read to gain a thorough technical knowledge and the best books to help develop a strong artistic style?

thanks.
 
I only recomend a couple of books


langfords basic photography - michael langford

CS3 for digital photographers - scott kelby


the net is full of good (but also bad sadly) information so the need for books is not huge.


only you can develop a style, looking at other peoples work will only make you copy theirs and not really get one of your own.


oh and practice lol
 
'On photography' by susan sontag.

It's a required text for many photography degree courses; it's old, from the early Magnum-era, but it's still eye-opening. Ansel Adam's theory on dynamic range and exposure [the zone theory] is also a required text for many.

For lighter reading, Scott Kelby's a great read, but he'd be the first to tell you that he's about the love of photography and not about highbrow art...

Want style in abundance? Go here, look around, find inspiration... http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.AgencyHome_VPage&pid=2K7O3R1VX08V
 
If you don't mind the fact that his style is a bit on the dry and indigestable side then Ansel's series The Camera, The Negative and The Print are packed with technical knowhow as well as advice on how to "visualise" the picture before you take it. Despite the rise of digital photography there is very little in these books that has been made obsolete and even the chapters on perspective adjustment in view cameras will help you to understand why some photographs just look "wrong".
 
The Moment It Clicks - Joe McNally
(insights, advice and examples you only get from someone who's been in the industry for a long time put together very nicely)
 
Nicos Rex said:
If you don't mind the fact that his style is a bit on the dry and indigestable side then Ansel's series The Camera, The Negative and The Print are packed with technical knowhow as well as advice on how to "visualise" the picture before you take it. Despite the rise of digital photography there is very little in these books that has been made obsolete and even the chapters on perspective adjustment in view cameras will help you to understand why some photographs just look "wrong".
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I second this suggestion!
 
The Photographer's Eye by Michael Freeman is a very interesting book on composition that I refer to a lot. As for developing your own style, buy and absorb as many monographs as you can.
 
I have looked a hundreds of photography books out of curiosity but felt the need to buy very few. one that I did buy and always sits on my desk AND that I keep looking through is - Composition by David Prakel (published by AVA). Its a wonderful book for improving technical ability but there's a huge amount of artistic inspiration in there too. It gives a thousand examples of what approaches to composition work and what approaches don't (and why). It also tells you to break the rules and experiment.

Its the only photography book I ever really bother looking at (as opposed to books on post-processing).
 
subseasniper said:
The Photographer's Eye by Michael Freeman is a very interesting book on composition that I refer to a lot. As for developing your own style, buy and absorb as many monographs as you can.
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I agree! I also like looking at some of the older stuff too, for example Brassai Paris by Taschen books and I've got quite a few of the Pocket books series which are dedicated to individual photographers.
 
BrownWarrior said:
thanks for everyones suggestions. the camera, negative and print seems to be out of print and aprox £140 so i don't think i will be bothering with that also because it is old and i don't use negatives and it is too expensive. i'll probably get a copy of the cs3 book though and one of the composition books mentiond and possible the susan sontag book.
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It's a shame if the Adams books are out of print. I'd strongly recommend getting hold of a secondhand set if you can. Just because they are old doesn't make them useless. Granted, they are about silver-halide processes, which may seem irrelevant if you shoot digitally. But the fundamentals of cameras, exposure and so on are still the same, as is using your equipment to get the best possible image quality.
If you ever decided to look at a view camera, or use tilt/shift lenses, then there are some good explanations of how the various movements work.

The main theme through the books is that of 'previsualisation', which means thinking about the final print before the exposure has been made.
If you really want to improve your photography, learning the zone system will pay handsome dividends. Things like applying exposure compensation become second nature and it really does make you think about getting things right at the taking stage, thereby minimising the amount of rescue work one has to do in either the darkroom or on the computer.

Another book that's worth having to hand is a Focal Encyclopedia. It's a mine of useful (and often arcane) information, but very handy for explaining technical terms as so forth.

Cheers


Mark
 
I don't know who told you that the Ansel Adams books are o/p but they're not and on Amazon for about £18 each...
 
Agreed, the Ansel Adams books provide a good basis in photographic theory, but the zone system doesn't really transfer too well to digital shooting does it? How many digital photographers visualise the final print and adjust exposure according to how they are going to develop the negative & final print?

I found this book a good source of information http://www.amazon.com/Photography-Barbara-London/dp/0321011082 But don't buy it, just loan it from the local library first, then that'll help you decide whether it's worth buying as a reference book.
 
sprog said:
Agreed, the Ansel Adams books provide a good basis in photographic theory, but the zone system doesn't really transfer too well to digital shooting does it? How many digital photographers visualise the final print and adjust exposure according to how they are going to develop the negative & final print?
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Yes, the principles of the zone system do transfer well to digital and I think you will find that quite a lot of photographers work that way. It's about knowing how to appraise a scene and the subject-brightness range in order to get the maximum amount of usable information onto the medium in question, be it film or a sensor. Knowing whether there will be detail in highlights is essential if you don't want your prints to have huge areas of white.

The only real difference with applying the zone system's techniques to digital photography is to expose for the highlights and develop (electronically) for the shadows, whereas with a negative it's expose for the shadows and develop (chemically) for the highlights.

I had the good luck to go on a course run by the late Barry Thornton. His mantra was always "you can't make a fine print out of a coarse negative". I try my best to apply this maxim whether I'm in the darkroom or the lightroom as it's equally valid.

If you want to make 'fine' prints, with a full tonal range, then surely this is a sensible approach?
 
sprog said:
Agreed, the Ansel Adams books provide a good basis in photographic theory, but the zone system doesn't really transfer too well to digital shooting does it? How many digital photographers visualise the final print and adjust exposure according to how they are going to develop the negative & final print?

<snip>
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The whole point of Ansel's books is that along with the technical stuff like the Zone System etc there is a thread running through all three books about what he calls "visualisation".

His fundamental point is that unless you have an idea of how you want the finished image to look before you press the button you will not be in a position to make the creative decisions at each stage to achieve the desired result. Once you take this on board the rest of it falls into place becoming a toolkit to inform your decision making processes.

It is this which makes his books enduring classics (in spite of his heavy prose style) and if more digital photographers visualised the final result their work would be the better for it.
 
My Dad managed to pick a book up from Borders based on the D80, really good informative book, explains what settings to use for each type of photography, they did books for canon aswell, drop us a PM if your interested and I'll find out the name for you.
 
I've just finished reading 'On Being a photographer' by Davin Hurn Clicky and Bill Jay.

It's written in the style of a conversation between the two which makes it quite light reading but it's also an insight into how David Hurn works.

S
 
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