The Online Photographer

A gorgeous 40-inch high print of Lisette Model's Running
Legs, New York, 1940 made a powerful impression in
the first room of the "Street Seen" show.

...And speaking, as we were, of street photography...sometimes I crash and burn. There are things I want to do, and that I absolutely should do, that I just don't. For whatever reason.

This is one. I really should have written a review of this show, which originated in my backyard at the Milwaukee Art Museum (and was a treat—I'd never seen real Lisette Models, for starters, and they're much better than I thought they'd be). And I certainly should have mentioned this book before now.

I even began an interview with the curator, Lisa Hostetler. But she was busy, I was busy, and I failed to persist. Say what you will about its felicities, the piecework demands of running a daily blog do tend to obstruct the kind of concentration and commitment needed to write more thoughtful pieces of greater length.

Marvin Newman, Untitled (Women’s Legs), 1951

Maybe one problem is that I fear I'll fail to do justice to such a complex subject. This book is a largely original thesis: it looks at a certain subset of mid-20th-century photography in the context of culture, relating what was emerging in expressive photography at the time to other currents in the arts, including abstract expressionism (the book reproduces a few paintings, which is unusual), Beat poetry, film noir, and "New Journalism." The photographers in the exhibition, in alphabetical order, are Margaret Bourke-White, Alexey Brodovitch, Rudy Burckhardt, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Ted Croner, Don Donaghy, Evans, Louis Faurer, Frank, Sid Grossman, John Gutmann, Dave Heath, Klein, Saul Leiter, Leon Levinstein, Levitt, Roger Mayne, Model, Marvin Newman, Frank Paulin, Smith, David Vestal, and Weegee. The work is abstract, elliptical, adventurous—personal impressions, many related to interpretations of direct experience.

Ted Croner, New York, 1947

The catalog is a beautiful book: the layout is near-ideal, the reproduction quality extremely good, the essay excellent. I really like the picture choices: just enough familiar chestnuts to ground the less familiar work, and many pictures, including some gems, that I have nowhere else in my library. And many by some quite little-known photographers.

Recommended for anyone with a bent to American photo history, photographs of cities, or who is interested in the antecedents of the art photography of the 'sixties and 'seventies; strongly recommended to anyone with any commitment to street photography.

U.S. Link: Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959

U.K. link

Mike

P.S. The blurb write-ups stress that the book covers only six photographers, but that's not really the case. The texts concentrate on Croner, Faurer, Model, Frank (and H. C.-B., evidently not counted among the six), Klein, and Leiter, but the reproductions do a pretty good job of covering all the photographers and of representing the entire show.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by JackM: "Glad Mike finally got to this one.

"Lisa is a gem, and this book has gotten her even more attention as a star of photography curating. The exhibit was extremely well done, and should have gone on tour. Alas, the economy made that more difficult, but the book travels very well.

"If you care at all about street photography this will inspire you to shoot even more."

The Digital Photography Workflow Handbook. Another one that's on my radar but that I haven't seen yet. I'm a little unclear on the availability of this title: Amazon lists the publication date as October 28th—that's next Thursday—but says the book's in stock now. My idle guess is that if you order it sometime soon you'll probably get it sometime soon. You're welcome for the precise reporting.

In any event, Juergen and Uwe's previous book, 2008's Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers, was very popular with TOP readers, although I can no longer look up the sales numbers. This new title from the same team might have similar appeal.

A minor incidence
By the way, I saw an actual printed copy of the William Albert Allard book at the bookstore yesterday—previously I'd just seen the whole-book PDF from the publisher—and it's beautiful; the reproduction is first rate. In the "cons" column, a disappointing number of images (although by no means all) are run across the gutter, an infernal practice unfortunately much beloved of book designers. What the heck, I guess a lot of the images also got gutter-chopped in the magazine in the first place. Allard's pictures are, for the most part, simple enough to withstand the abuse fairly well. I don't think the mild incidence of Gutter Disease will detract much from peoples' enjoyment; the repro has such presence and depth. Quite pleasing.

As an aside, all three of my local bookstores (two new, one used) have recently compressed their photo-book displays from two bookcases to one. Probably due to vultures like moi who sell so many books over the internet. [Existential sigh.]

The same bookstore where I saw Five Decades had a copy of Street Photography Now, but the single copy was shrink-wrapped and the store was apparently entirely unstaffed, because I couldn't locate a soul capable of giving me permission to gnash it open. So I still haven't seen it. Life is a quest.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

ADDENDUM: To answer a question about jargon asked in the comments: the gutter is the seam created by the binding. In a book or magazine, a "page" is one side of a single leaf; a "spread" is two facing pages. The gutter is where the two pages in a spread meet. It originally referred to the column of white space between text blocks created by the inner margins in a book of text.

Another jargon term you might encounter is "double-truck," which usually refers to a picture that covers all or most of both halves of a spread. A double-truck photo by definition runs across the gutter.

For more, see this link under the subhead "Page Spread."

A further term that might mean something different than you think it means is "sheet," which in printing means the whole larger sheet of paper which is printed all at once and then folded down and trimmed to make the book or magazine's individual leaves. That's the source of the curious Latinate words you see such as "octavo" and "quarto" which purportedly describe the size of a book: in Olden Times, printing press sheets were more or less of similar size, so the size of your finished book depended on how many time you folded the sheets. An octavo, for instance, was one sheet on which 16 pages were printed, folded three times to make eight (in Latin, "octo") leaves. The finished, folded and trimmed sheet was referred to as a "gathering."

(This is all part of a subject still somewhat near and dear to my heart; when I was young I was all set to commence a career as a bookbinder when I was stymied by Ronald Reagan.)

Street Photography Now, by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren (Thames & Hudson). I haven't seen the book itself, although I'd like to. But a peculiar controversy has come up concerning it.

When Michael David Murphy, at 2point8, a street photography blog, got his copy, he says he was "surprised by how many quotes are utilized in the essays by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, and how few of the quotes are cited." So, he continues, "on a lark, I started inserting bits of the book's text into my search engine on 2point8 and (you guessed it) was surprised to find multiple passages that were copied verbatim, from this site." (Emphases his.) Specifically, he later clarifies, "Uncited sections from two interviews (originally published on 2point8) appear on pages 14 & 85 of Street Photography Now."

More regrettably, there are comments on his post from a person named Johanna, otherwise unidentified, who apparently either is, or is speaking for, the book's publisher, and from one of the book's authors, Sophie Howarth—both of whom condescendingly wave off his concerns. "...Even if Sophie and Stephen [the authors] had provided citations of sources for each and every quote," says Johanna, "we would not have included them—preferring instead to have lively and informative essays and biographies, without the interruption of academic apparatus in text...."

What? Indicating the sources of quotations is now "academic apparatus"? It's pleasantly non-academic to imply that you conducted the interview yourself, firsthand, rather than credit whoever actually did?

I got to wondering if anything in my background as a journalist, editor, writer or reader provides any basis for such a view, which I immediately leapt to judge as absurd.

And I do think of one precedent: Renaissance essayists would sometimes quote classical authors (usually inset, and in italics, and in either Latin or ancient Greek)—making the assumption, one supposes, that all of their erudite readers would have received the standard private tutelage and done the standard Continental tour and be fluent both in the dead languages used and in the works of the authors so quoted. So the Restoration essayist Thomas Browne, say, might allow Propertius or Seneca or some classical author of like ilk to stand thusly self-identified...or so I think; on checking Donald Frame's translation of Michel de Montaigne, the classical authors are identified (though it might have been Frame who did that, rather than Montaigne), and, in Francis Bacon*, most, though not all, of his quotes are preceded by "St. Bernard saith," or "Cicero saith...."

Standard journalistic practice, according to my paltry understanding, would be to insert a clause such as "as he said in an interview on 2point8...," which does not fatally interrupt the flow of the text, for me.

Bottom line: I'm not sure this lapse disqualifies the book from purchase, but for me it might. (Just depends on how I feel about it when it comes down to making the purchase decision.) As Michael says in his own conclusion, "...they copied-and-pasted passages off the Web and failed to cite their sources." Thumbs down on that.

Mike

*This is a particularly nice edition, by the way. I love the name "Peter Pauper Press."

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

By Geoff Wittig

The fields of landscape, natural history and wildlife photography frequently (though not exclusively) demonstrate a conservationist ethic. In years past, such work was often intended to spark public interest in preserving wilderness and animal habitat from development. Many prominent wildlife photographers, including Art Wolfe, Franz Lanting, and Tom Mangelsen, explicitly address these concerns in their work.

These books are not like that. To the contrary, they represent a kind of elegy for a world (ecosystem?) of genuinely wild animals that will be gone forever within my childrens' lifetime.

Like many folks of (ahem) a certain age, I grew up with the comforting notion that the extermination of wildlife was a sin of an earlier, less enlightened era. I believed that national parks and wildlife refuges had "solved" the problem and that wild animals would always have a place in the world.

If only this were true. Even in North America, large mammals ("charismatic megafauna") are under intense pressure due to fragmented habitat and climate change. In Africa, the situation is far more dire. Elephant populations have fallen from an estimated 5 or ten million in 1900 to approximately 400,000 in 2000. In unprotected areas, African wildlife is being speedily hunted to extinction. Even the large national parks in East Africa are deteriorating rapidly. From over-browsing by hemmed-in herds of elephants to widespread poaching to the diversion of water resources for livestock, the future of Africa's large mammals looks bleak.

Brandt
Nick Brandt has spent much of the last decade photographing the great mammals of Africa, from elephants to Cape buffalo to cheetahs. His highly stylized black-and-white images have an immediately recognizable look to them, one that's consistent across a large body of work. Brandt notes that he's aiming for artistic portraits of these vanishing animals, rather than the customary clinical wildlife shots, in an effort to capture something of their essence before they're gone.

Between magazine interviews and posts on a number of websites and blogs, one can glean something about his working methods. He photographs mostly with a Pentax 67 on black-and-white film, and favors much shorter focal lengths than the artillery customarily used for wildlife images. Some of his photographs look like they were shot on infrared film, and many make liberal use of a red filter for dramatically darkened skies. Very shallow depth of field features in many of his animal portraits; he has explicitly denied using a tilt-shift lens or Photoshop to get this effect, coyly claiming to use a '"low-tech" in-camera method. (There's been a lot of on-line speculation about shooting through a de-mounted lens with a slight tilt applied. I suspect Brandt is simply exploiting medium format's intrinsically shallow depth of field, with a touch of Photoshop artistic license thrown in, his protests notwithstanding.) He prints digitally with an inkjet on cotton rag paper.

On This Earth: Photographs from East Africa (here's the U.K. link), published in 2005, is still widely available, and it's probably the best general sample of Nick Brandt's work. It's ideally sized to hold in your hands, with a simple sans serif typeface and decent margins for the photographs. The images are all reproduced on the right hand leaf as varnished duotones on semi-matte paper, nicely conveying the warm chocolate tones and glowing highlights of Brandt's interpretations. The photographs themselves are simply beautiful, and some of them have rightly become icons, including the cover image shown above of a bull elephant on a stark plain casting a shower of dust over himself. A Foreword by Alice Sebold and an introduction by Jane Goodall precede the photographs.

A Shadow Falls, published in September 2009 (U.K. link), is a larger and more luxurious book from a different publisher. However, it employs similarly restrained typopgraphy, design, and layout. The photographic reproductions are quite close to those in the earlier book, though they look just a bit lighter to my eye. Brandt's striking and moody images are again very well served. The larger photographs are printed double-truck across the fold; but they survive the insult, as the spine opens readily to lay flat on your desk or table. It's a bit too big to hold in your hands. Forewords by photography critic Vickie Goldberg and philosopher Peter Singer precede the photographs, as does a heartfelt introduction by Brandt.

There are many striking books of wildlife photography available. Nick Brandt's stand out from the crowd with a sustained interpretive æsthetic and an elegiac tone that hits home.

Beard
Peter Beard is about as far away from Nick Brandt as you can get. A trust-fund bon-vivant with a colorful social history, Beard has spent long stretches in Africa since 1955. The End of the Game: The Last Word from Paradise (U.K. link) was first published around 1965, and has been repeatedly revised and reprinted since. It's a curious pastiche of colonial era tall tales, famous hunts, snapshots, old lithographs, hand-written notes and aerial photographs. The typeface is a consciously old-fashioned Monotype Caslon, in between the hand-written notes. If you can get through all the self-indulgent 1960s-style "self expression," however, there's something interesting here. Beard evidently started out in Africa as a youthful lark, but over time came to recognize a calamity in the making. Long before the current wildlife holocaust began to play out in earnest, he saw it coming, and tried to sound an alarm. The "game" in the title refers to Africa's rôle as a playground for wealthy Europeans and Americans, going on Safari to casually massacre elephants and lions for trophies. To his credit, Beard tried to get Western journalists interested. His disgust at a smugly misleading 60 Minutes story in 1980 crackles off the page. The last section is a horrifying collection of aerial photographs of hundreds of elephant skeletons and carcasses. On some pages the images of dead elephants are laid out in a grid, precisely like Bernd and Hilla Becher's "typologies." The photographic reproductions are mediocre at best, and the original images more documentary than artistic. But it's still a fascinating book.

Geoff

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Just in case you're interested in a follow-up: in the six days since I posted the "unboxing" photos of the large, 3-volume, hardcover, slipcased, $140 Bruce Davidson set—which means it's been five days since I also recommended the little $10.85 Photofile paperback of Josef Koudelka's work—TOP readers in the U.S. and the U.K. have ordered 20 copies of the Koudelka and 54 copies of the Davidson. Like I said, people just don't seem to care for little photo books quite as much....

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bernd Reinhardt: "I just received the Bruce Davidson books and I have to say I had no idea how beautiful they were. I had seen a lot of Davidson's work and a lot of his early books were sold out and going for high prices in the antique book market. This new volume is absolutely stunning, beautifully printed and bound. The only negative is my wife nagging about all my photography books taking up too much space in our house. You can imagine how grumpy she was when she saw this giant package."

Mike replies: In the hi-fi hobby they call that "WAF"—wife acceptance factor. (To be less sexist one might call it SAF, spousal acceptance factor—although let's be honest, most of the time it's the males who are into the big goofy-looking hi-fi gear and the females who are dismayed to have half their living rooms taken over.)

Very large speakers of unconventional appearance that need lots of free space around them are known to often have low "WAF." This is Nelson Pass's stereo—the speakers are single drivers; the large plywood construction is a "kleinhorn" (German for "small" (!) horn), probably three meters tall, that loops around the back and comes back out the front, meant to capture and amplify the driver's backwave. This is in a dedicated building, not his living room, but still, you might want to share this with your wife just to let her know how much worse things could be. [g].

TOP readers buy a lot of books, and I get to see an accounting of what's been purchased. I study the lists for clues about what people like and don't like.

Just so you know, what I see is a general accounting of items purchased. I do not see which items were grouped together into an individual's entire order, and I am given no customer information at all—I don't see who you are, or where you are, or anything about your buying habits.

Here's what I see:

(Click on this to see it larger.) The first column is the item name, the second lists where the order was fulfilled from, third is the unit price, fourth is my commission as a percentage, fifth is the number of units ordered, next to last is the gross sale amount, and the last column, in bold, is TOP's slice of your pie.

The items are divided by categories (books, housewares, electronics, etc.), and I can get information daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. The percentage of the affiliate commission goes up as we sell more items in any given month, which is why even small items ordered through our links help me out—they help raise the percentage for everything.

Wee hardcovers
Anyway, one thing I think I've detected from the data over the years I've been watching it is that people tend not to like little books.

Why is this? Is it because little books just don't seem...serious enough? As if a book that is physically slight must also be slight in importance?

Per'aps. I kind of like little books, myself. For a while, back when I didn't have a car and used the bus as my main mode of transportation around Washington, D.C., I made a desultory attempt to collect books in the "Oxford World Classics" series. Nowadays these are paperbacks of conventional dimensions, but originally they were wee little hardcovers in Oxford's traditional gold-stamped, navy blue cloth garb. I found it handy to carry one in my pocket for reading on the bus. I read all of Walden that way. Perfect bus book.

The original pocket-sized "Oxford's The World's Classics" were later reissued by other publishers, first Avenel, and finally as a  a limited set issued by Barnes & Noble. I didn't do a very good job collecting them: they're actually quite scarce, here in the U.S. at least.

On the Archie Bunker chair (I really need to set up a semi-permanent studio table in the house so I can take presentable pictures of objects), a snap of two Jane Austen titles from the World's Classics, with coins, a lens, and an Amphoto book for scale. An older Oxford Press version of Persuasion is on top and a Barnes & Noble issue of Sense and Sensibility (with dj, even) below. Note golden nostalgic glow, compliments of wacky mixed lighting.

Among photo books, a case in point is Clément Chéroux's little book about Henri Cartier-Bresson, published by Thames & Hudson in the U.K. under its "New Horizons" rubric, and by Abrams in the U.S. in a similar series called "Discoveries." This is another one Ken and I were discussing the other day. It really is a terrific little book, and I think it makes an outstanding introduction, and even a good basic book, about the photographer. M. Chéroux, who is a photographic historian and curator at the Pompidou Center in Paris (the book was originally written in French under the title Henri Cartier-Bresson: Le Tir Photographique), has good insights and has clearly done his homework well, and the book is crammed with added-value supporting illustrations of the type that publishers too often forego these days.

A good book, but little

Its problem is that it's little: less than 7" high. (It's correspondingly cheap: only $10.36 from Amazon U.S. and £4.69 from Amazon U.K.) If this were a premium hardcover of modest coffee-table size and cost $40, I'll bet a lot more people would take it seriously. 

Anyway, if you buy it, I recommend you actually read it. You'll get a lot out of it if you do.

Stopgap
All of the above is a very long way to go to get to my subject. After Peter's posts about Voja Mitrovic the other day (which I'm glad you enjoyed, by the way), a number of people contacted me saying, "I've heard of Cartier-Bresson, but who's this fellow Koudelka?" 

And here we have a dilemma. I have a number of Josef Koudelka books, foremost among them Gypsies and Exiles. But you really can't easily buy any of them today (take a gander at the prices at those links as a fer instance). The one book that's in print and readily available is Invasion 68: Prague (here's the U.K. link), which is a major accomplishment of photojournalism and a very important part of the Koudelka canon, but withal not entirely characteristic of his artwork.

So, what do do?

What I'd recommend if you don't know Koudelka and want to familiarize yourself with him is the little, inexpensive, and readily available Josef Koudelka from Thames & Hudson's "Photofile" series of pocket books. (Here it is for the U.K.) Yes, it's small: only seven inches (17.8 cm) high. But the reproductions really are quite good, lacking maybe just a little subtlety in the highlights, but conveying the essence of the pictures. And they're pleasing to look at.

Many of the iconic Koudelka images are present in the Photofile book, printed well enough that you can appreciate them.

You have to hold the book sideways to see them, but the designer hasn't wreaked carnage by running any through the gutter. The selection of work is excellent, perfect for an introduction. Many of the great photographs are here. It will give you a very good handle on what Koudelka is all about. And for $12.44/£5.57, it's tough to go too far wrong. Consider it a serviceable stopgap until Exiles or Gypsies is reissued in hardcover (which you would definitely hear about here).

People probably won't take to this solution. I expect to see only a few copies of Josef Koudelka show up on the orders page at my affiliate link*. That's too bad. But human nature is what it is, and I understand.

*If somebody will remind me, I'll check on it and report back in a week or two.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Cecelia: "I have a basic issue with little books—they don't work on my shelves! When I first get one and read it, of course the reading/viewing process is just fine. But after than initial reading, storing them doesn't work well because most photo books are medium- to large-sized, and the small books are too short in height and depth to commingle on the same shelves. This means the small books get segregated with really little books like Beatrix Potter or normal little books like paperback fiction—neither of which are in the photo section of my library. This storage issue does not prevent me from purchasing a small book if I think the information is helpful, but it is annoying and I wish publishers would think through the practicality. You can always add white space around the edge of a page and make a book a more standard size—hopefully without adding $25 to the price."

Mike replies: Very interesting. I agree that shelving is a big issue—I've written about those headaches in the past. I do think there's been real size inflation over the years I've been in photography. Many of the important books of the '60s and '70s would now be considered small to medium-sized: giving height first, my copy of Walker Evans' American Photographs is 8x7"; William Eggleston's Guide 9.25x9.25"; The Americans (I have the Pantheon reprint) 8.75x9.75"; Charles Pratt: Photographs (which we were discussing the other day) 10x9"; Frances Benjamin Johnston[no relation]'s The Hampton Album 7x9.75"; Dan Weiner from the ICP Library of Photographers, 8.75x7.5"; Max Yavno's Los Angeles Book 9.75x6.75"; and so on. I would like to see a "right sizing" movement in photo books, with some relaxation from the expectation that all photography books need to be coffee-table sized as a default. You say a book being too small will not prevent you from buying it, but I have to admit that a book being too big will prevent me from buying it—possibly. At least it makes me think twice.

Also, I do think that Clément Chéroux's book really is too small, at least in its English translation, just based on type size, page layout, and the sizes of the illustrations.

Featured Comment by Adam Isler: "I think there may be some shopping psychology and cognitive biases at work here, too, with regard to little books. I know that often when buying a book online I want to buy several at a time to amortize the shipping costs better. It just seems wrong to spend $6.95 or so on shipping (and more for sales tax) for a book that costs little more, or even less, than that. Amazon encourages you to spend $25 for free shipping and I'll often buy my daughter a book or get additional books lower down my priority list to make up the distance to $25 and get 'free' shipping (even as I know I'm succumbing to their insidious blandishments). Could a similar cognitive bias prevent me from ordering a small book online? Perhaps small books should be picked up singly in airport lounges only or by the armful at second-hand stalls for a song? Perhaps it's just too disappointing when the longed for Amazon box arrives and there's naught but a single, tiny book within?"

So, before we start, care to guess what this is? Take a sec. Bet you can't....

Click past the break to see more.

It was surprisingly easy to decide what to put on this list. I thought it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the simple reason that we all want to know "how to" do different things. Photography's house is large, and contains many mansions.

I think the reason it was easy is that the list is so short. Make it more than a dozen and the sub-categories begin to get complicated. Beginner or veteran? Color or monochrome? Film or digital? But there are those books that are either so popular, good, admired, or lasting that including them on a short list comes by acclaim. You can of course quibble with individual choices (please).

Obviously there are many specialties and numerous areas in which a technical library could go into much greater depth, but all of these books contain much that any photographer could learn from—even the ones that don't address the kind of photography you happen to be interested in, or practice, right now.

Set-aside
...But first, a title apart: Ctein's Digital Restoration from Start to Finish. This book makes my personal top 12 list, but Ctein (the name is pronounced "kuh-TINE," and it's his whole legal name) is a friend and a long-time collaborator and contributor to The Online Photographer, and including him in the basic list could easily be seen as, if not a conflict of interest, then at least a conflict of objectivity. But in the main, the judgement about the book from TOP readers who've bought it is that its usefulness and interest go well beyond what the title promises.

Humbly submitted, then, here is TOP's list of the top tech titles.

1. The Ansel Adams Photo Series: The Camera, The Negative, and The Print, by Ansel Adams and Robert Baker (Little, Brown, 1995). (Best to consider this a matched set instead of three separate books—but you only need these three, and can dispense with auxiliary titles. Note also that I'm not recommending the "Ansel Adams Guides by John P. Shaefer." The correct ones to have are the ones at the links. I understand the covers of those have now changed, to all white.)

Adams's technical writings were developed throughout his lifetime, starting with a rather opaque single volume called Making a Photograph: An Introduction to Photography way back in 1935, proceeding to the Morgan & Morgan volumes kicked off in 1948 that were reprinted numerous times, and culminating in this wonderful set from 1980. A thorough revision, carried out just before the master's death, these were made with the help of many people, including Adams's last assistant, John Sexton, co-author Robert Baker, and Jim Alinder, then the Director of the Friends of Photography in Carmel. Adams was an American institution by the time this project was done, and his publishers, The New York Graphic Society, spared no expense and took painstaking care over these books. Their clarity is admirable, and Adams's generosity, ebullience, experience and deep knowledge come off equally vividly.

The books have now segued (as Adams predicted, in these very pages, that they would) into describing materials and processes that are obsolescent and beginning to become historical. However, my feeling is that no photographer will fail to benefit from this extended encounter with Ansel Adams as teacher.

Recommended for the hardcore techie, meaning, dedicated large-format B&W photographers of a mathematical cast of mind who are not afraid to get into sensitometry—and purchase a densitometer: Beyond the Zone System by Phil Davis (Focal Press, 1998). Considerably more rigorous than Adams and Archer's Zone System.

2. Scott Kelby's Digital Photography Boxed Set, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (Peachpit Press, 2009). This might seem like a digital parallel to the above, because it's another three-volume set, but, really, there's nothing in the young field of digital that can remotely match the authority and time-tested seriousness of the Adams titles. Scott Kelby's books are best-sellers and widely enjoyed (he's been the #1 computer-book author for five years running—and I'll always be grateful for an important mention he gave to TOP in Layers magazine during our rather precarious early days). They're easy and fun to read and chock full of info. Big on tips 'n' tricks, they have something for everyone. Just one mild caution, which is not a criticism of the books but an admonition to the reader: the books repeatedly say they're telling you how to do things "like a pro," which is true, but bear in mind that "pro" pictures are generally (I say generally, son, generally) fashionable, competent, standardized, surfacey, and most often anonymous and interchangeable: there's nothing wrong with competence and the ability to get a clear picture when you need to, Lord knows, but a lot of devoted amateurs would rather know how to do things "like an artist" than "like a pro." I'm just sayin'; will go shut up now.

If you already have one or more of the three volumes, you can buy the slipcase separately.

Like Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure that we were discussing the other day, Scott's trio is best suited for beginners and some intermediate photographers. If you no longer fit into those categories but would like a "core" digital text, I suggest waiting for the forthcoming new third edition of Peachpit's Real World Digital Photography by Katrin Eismann, Sean Duggan, and Tim Grey, which should be along shortly. It's available for pre-order now.

Concepts and Approaches

3. On Being a Photographer: A Practical Guide by Bill Jay and David Hurn (Lenswork Publishing, 2007). Ominously, this essential book is listed as "out of stock" at the publisher, and has been for some time now, if I'm not mistaken, and there is at least a chance that there are issues over the rights following the recent death of co-author Bill Jay (I am going to miss Bill Jay). If you don't have it yet, better turn over rocks (if not move mountains) to acquire it while you can. Of course, maybe it's just awaiting its next printing. But ya never know. (There is a "DVD Version" listed at Lenswork without much elaboration. Don't know about that, but I'll try to find out.)

4. The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets From One of the World's Top Shooters It's gratifying that this book, which has lately been so popular, is so good. Joe McNally, who has the energy typical of pros but is, shall we say, unusually self-effacing and friendly, works at the more glamorous end of the profession, and he's a pretty unusual photographer, working at a high level—that's a pun for those in the know, as he's known for working at high levels, literally—that's a self-portrait, above—but also finding time and funding for a massive personal project making portraits of 9/11 firefighters.

His book gives lots of really practical and genuinely valuable advice, but also gives you a very good window into what it's like to be a top pro today. You probably already have this, as it has been distributed to everyone on the planet able to pronounce the word "camera," but if for any reason you don't....

Light and Lighting

5. Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting By Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua (Focal Press, 2007). Lighting is probably the photographic subject which is least often learned from books. It is, first of all, mainly the province of studio and commercial photographers, who have evolved among themselves a sort of extemporaneous apprenticeship system known, of course, as assisting. In return for working hard for low pay, the assistant learns the tricks of the trade from, as it were, the master of his or her choosing. Other ways of learning lighting might include hand-on classes at technical schools—the Art Center in Los Angeles and R.I.T. have outstanding courses in lighting—or simply through experimentation and the personal experience of trial and error. Among all these ways of gaining knowledge about lighting, books bring up the rear.

This might not be the case if all books on the subject were as intelligent and knowledgeable as Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua's. Their discussions range from "How Photographers Describe Light" and the concept of the family of angles, to specific surfaces and backgrounds and strategies of approaches to picturing different materials such as glass or metal. Our full review, by Geoff Wittig, is here. Geoff says of the book, "it is much easier reading than one would think; the concepts and their application flow so logically and are so clearly explained that it's entertaining rather than a dry slog."

In the category of lighting, two more books deserve mention. The first is our friend Kirk Tuck's great best-seller Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography, a book with a perfect title that is perfectly descriptive of the book's contents. The second is the companion book to The Moment It Clicks, Joe McNally's The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes, which might be thought of as "Strobist in book form." But then, maybe David Hobby will one day write his own book....

4. Photojournalism: The Professionals' Approach, 6th edition by Kenneth Kobré (Focal Press, 2008). This is the book that started me down the road to writing this post, when someone mentioned Professor Kobré's "Lightscoop" flash attachment in the comments the other day. The longtime "bible" of photojournalism and the most-used textbook on the subject. It's been around for years, and it's been years since I've seen it.

Subjects include:

• covering news, features, sports, politics and contemporary issues
• narrative picture stories
• finding features and catching candids
• environmental and interpretive portraits
• recording sound for multimedia and video
• shooting video
• creative use of the strobe
• digital shooting & darkroom techniques
• concept photography & illustrations
• newsroom politics
• picture editing
• shooting within the bounds of the law
• controversial pictures & ethical discussions
• expanded history of photojournalism
• internships and after
• freelancing and business practices.

Nature and Outdoor

7. Landscape Beyond: A Journey into Photography by David Ward (Aurum Press, 2008). Generations of color nature and outdoor photographers got kick-started by two essential books: Galen Rowell's Mountain Light (currently out of print) and John Shaw's original Nature Photographer's Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques of 1984, the cover of which was a white egret on a blue background (a revised, updated version from 2001 is available as John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide). David Ward's book is exemplary among a more recent crop of titles, and reflects the vibrant British nature photography scene. And you've got to love a book the first chapter of which is entitled "Simplicity."

David Ward. Photo courtesy Calumet U.K.

Geoff Wittig reviewed this book for us last year. He said, "Landscape Beyond is David Ward's eloquent, thoughtful exploration of the aesthetic structure of landscape photographs. This is several planes higher than the customary 'rule of thirds, golden hour light' type of discussion. Ward instead delves into perceptual theory, the properties of beauty, and the nature of mystery. The book is illustrated by his photographs, which are quietly breathtaking. They convey an impression of the contemplative beauty to be found in the natural world."

Image Editors

8. Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: a professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC by Martin Evening (Focal Press, 2010). Criticisms that this book is long, thorough, and complicated have always struck me as slightly absurd: Photoshop itself is difficult, complex, and definitely industrial-strength, indisputably the app of choice for imaging professionals. Why buy any book that won't help you master it thoroughly? A simple, dilettante-friendly book about Photoshop would be analogous to a book called "Anybody Can Fly a Fighter Jet—in Six Easy Steps!!!" Yep, tough subject: so is calculus or vascular surgery. You're not going master it from your easy chair with a game on.

The 2010 edition contains a well-received DVD.

Of course, it obviously only makes sense to buy a how-to book about software if it covers a program you use. So, alternately:

...For Aperture: Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 3 by Don Scoppettuolo. I have it on inside authority that this is the book that Apple's Aperture tech support people are trained on. It also includes a well-regarded DVD.

...For LightRoom 3: I don't use LightRoom, and don't know enough about the available books to make a choice. However, TOP reader Bahi Para, who teaches Lightroom, tells me "For Lightroom 3, I'm happy to report that the standard is really high but there are still two that stand out: Kelby and Evening." He notes Kelby's distinctive sense of humor and his talent for conveying a lot of information straightforwardly, and says Evening is for slightly more technically-minded people who might not enjoy Kelby's lighthearted approach.

...for GIMP: Grokking the GIMP online—read it online, download for free, or buy a printed copy. Shouldn't a free program have free documentation?

Optics and Lens Focal Lengths

9. EF Lens Work III: The Eyes of EOS. (Canon, Inc. Lens Product Group, 2008. Currently backordered). This might seem like a throwaway on this list, but not so. What's more important than understanding lenses and focal lengths? My own object of obsession in this category, long ago, was The OM System Lens Handbook, a book I almost memorized. (You can always tell which company is really feeling its oats at any given point in history: it's the one with the book out.) Although this is overtly a catalog of one manufacturer's products, you shouldn't necessarily avoid it for that reason. The discussions and examples of focal lengths and the copious supporting material—much of it excellent, especially the sections on manufacturing and the science of optics—make this a great learning tool for photographers of all stripes. Even ones who shoot Nikon, Pentax, or Olympus! I wouldn't be without it.

EF Lenswork III is also available as a free download in several parts.

Legal Handbook

10. Legal Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities of Making Images, by Bert Krages, Esq. (Amherst, 2006). What, this doesn't fall neatly into the "how-to" category for you? Well, it probably should. Bert Krages is the author of the deservedly famous "The Photographer's Right" page, a single sheet meant to be carried in your camera bag. Legal Handbook for Photographers is similarly succinct (128 no-nonsense pages) and similarly useful. Like it or not, we all deal with legal issues every day (especially these days) and your default shouldn't be ignorance. Not fun, maybe, but essential for any photographer.

An augmentation for photographers beginning in business: Carolyn E. Wright, Esq.'s Photographer's Legal Guide. Carolyn Wright writes the popular Photo Attorney blog.

11. Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5 by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe (Peachpit Press, 2010). I've made the case that what I'm about to describe is true of most books, from The Scarlet Letter to The Bush Dyslexicon. : books hit you different at different times of your life and at different stages of development. Certainly it's true of photo-technical books that they're better if they're there for you when you're ready for them. (Similarly, if you've moved beyond them, it becomes almost impossible to read them—it's been a long time since I was able to read a text on basic B&W printing, for instance. I've gotten to the point that I often know what books the authors were reading.)

Anyway, I read the late Bruce Fraser's Camera RAW when Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) was new and Bruce's book was the first one on the market, and it opened up digital photography for me—previously, the headache of setting white balance (WB) for every shot was just an intolerable intrusion into the flow of shooting, and it was that or be frustrated by the camera's often addled guesses (although cameras have gotten better since then). I was ready for it, it was ready for me, and I had something as close to a Socratic experience as you can have with a tech book. Now there are a whole passel of camera raw books—even one "for Dummies." Justified or not, I retain an durable affection for this one, which has been, for several editions now, thoughtfully updated and revised by the imaging polymath Jeff Schewe. Friends don't let friends shoot JPEG.

Okay, that last comment went overboard!

Not a book, but a nice way to learn RAW, especially (but not exclusively) if you use Adobe Lightroom, is Michael Tapes' excellent and expertly made video "RAW Without FUD" ("FUD" means fear, uncertainty, and doubt) from RawWorkflow.com, makers of the WhiBal.

12. Mastering Digital Printing by Harald Johnson (Course Technology PTR, 2004). Although this is definitely the first book you should have about digital printing, it should almost be called an "everything but how to" book. It covers virtually everything about digital printing except, well, the nuts 'n' bolts of how to actually do it. That might be part of what makes this book so useful and so enduring—it doesn't get caught in the trap of describing a limited set of ephemeral and transitory hardware and software products. You'll probably have to learn how to print online anyway, since everyone has their own combination of camera, software, and printer and the issues are often particular to each. But this is a great backgrounder. It sits on my shelf next to The Printed Picture by Richard Benson and Nash Editions: Photography and the Art of Digital Printing by Garrett White.

Oh, and for the nuts 'n' bolts missing from Harald Johnson's fine book? Try Uwe Steinmuller's Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers, 2nd Edition from Rocky Nook. (I've also sent away for Vincent Oliver's printing DVD, but it hasn't arrived yet so I can't say anything about it.)

There. I was determined to cram The Printed Picture on to this list somehow, even though it's a "what to" book rather than a how-to, and I finagled it.

Hope this list helps. I'd be interested in your contributions and criticisms. Cheers,

Mike
(Thanks to Geoff Wittig and Bahi Para)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Suggestions are welcome. Please tell us what you like and why you like it. And please, on the honor system, don't mention anything in which you have any stake or interest.

I won't be able to feature every suggestion, just a few, so be sure to see the comments for more.

Tim McGowan: "Great post, thank you. I've read a lot of photography 'how to's,' and the one book that really helped me with composition is... [Many more reader recommendations past the break —Ed.]

The new third edition of Chicago commercial pro Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera was just published yesterday, and is now shipping.

Quietly, under the radar (under mine, anyway—I already understand exposure, at least as well as I'm ever going to), Understanding Exposure has become a huge, vast, gargantuan bestseller, one of the best-selling how-to books in the history of the medium. It's a book for beginners and some intermediate photographers, but—well, beginners and intermediate photographers love it. Just take a look at some of the 763 (!) Amazon customer reviews for the second edition. And don't forget, we all start somewhere, sometime*.

Bryan Peterson (right). Photo by Jason Schneider.

The 176-page new edition is published in paperback by Amphoto books, and costs $25.99 at bookstores (or $17.15 at Amazon. Here's the U.K. link).

Mike

*Or maybe some of us just need a refresher, or a bit of remedial work. Not long ago I bought a whole book on Layers, because that's something I just don't understand very well for some reason. I'm going to read it, too, I swear. 

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ben Mathis: "I have to admit that this book was an immense help to me when I was getting started in photography. It explained the why and how of the aperture/shutter-speed/ISO triangle so clearly. I now recommend it to anyone getting into photography."

Featured Comment by Jim in Denver: "I was at a photographer's store/gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyo., chatting to one of the guys there, and he mentioned that there is no one 'right' exposure for any given scene or photograph. That is the type of advice that can totally confuse a beginner but completely liberate an experienced photographer. That single, offhand remark as changed the way I look at photography, to a huge benefit."

Featured Comment by Jan Ignatius: "I can definitely vouch for the book (I have the second edition). When I was starting out with photography, Understanding Exposure finally made everything click for me regarding the 'exposure triangle' of aperture, shutter speed and ISO. It also taught me some new techniques like panning and zooming during exposure. Whenever a friend or a colleague asks me for guidance on getting started with photography, I happily recommend the same book."

Featured Comment by Matthew Miller: "It really pains me whenever I hear someone talk about an exposure 'triangle,' and because this book puts so much emphasis on that visualization, I don't recommend it.

"Not everything that has three properties is a triangle! Crucially, these particular factors are linked in a different way: they work like the dimensions of a cube (or rather, rectangular prism), where the volume is the resulting exposure.

"The triangle explanation, on the other hand, simply confuses the nature of the relationship. Let's say a triangle with dimensions 3, 4, and 5 corresponds to ISO 400, ƒ/4, and an exposure time of 5 seconds. Great, we can draw a nice diagram. Okay, now, increase the shutter speed to 10 seconds, and draw a proportional triangle...hey, wait! That's impossible!

"The same thing happens if you make the factors be the angles of each corner—it just doesn't work out. Even for triangles which happen to be valid, the change to exposure isn't illustrated at all by what happens when you change part of a triangle.

"The 3D visualization might be more difficult to present nicely in a printed diagram, but I'm pretty sure a decent graphic designer could handle it.

"Clearly 'it's a triangle!' works as an explanation for many people, but I don't think I'm just being pedantic in objecting to it. Having the wrong visualization may be fine for introductory understanding, but having that stuck in ones head can make moving beyond that harder. It'd be better for the book to talk about 'here's three unrelated things!' than to present it as a triangle."

Gordon Lewis replies: I get what Matthew Miller is saying about the inadequacy of a triangle to illustrate the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO. For what it's worth, the analogy I like to use is that light is like water flowing out of a faucet. The shutter speed determines how long the faucet is open. The diameter of the faucet controls the volume of water flowing during any given duration. The size of the glass you hold under the faucet is the ISO; i.e., how much "water" it takes to fill the glass. The higher the ISO, the smaller the glass and therefore the less "water" it takes to fill it. A "correct exposure" fills the glass to the brim without causing it to overflow. I'm not claiming this is a perfect analogy, but at least it gets across the idea of what would happen if you make any one of the three factors smaller, larger, longer, or shorter.

Featured Comment by dale: "I will support Bryan's book, not simply for his explanation, but the way he presents it. I too had acquired the math back in the '60s probably around the same time Bryan did (we are the same age). But Bryan, who would be equally adept at selling Ginsu knives, has an appealing energy in his presentation and a solid interest in your success. I can credit him with a few lightbulb moments generated by his books and a significant one (Satori) in the first few minutes of a location workshop. I too had been uncomfortable with the term 'triangle' and modified it to 'triumvirate' whenever I felt the need to explain such stuff. Overall, as his success in print indicates, Bryan has a knack for instruction and is a good guy to hang out with, too."

Sah-weet. And there's a WiFi-only, non-3G model for only $139.

Check out the killer bullet points at the link...or, if you don't wanna, I'll synopsize them for you:

• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Potentially cool

I don't have $189 to spare at the moment, but I think I'm eventually a goner. Further resistance is now futile?

Mike

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Featured Comment by Pavel Derka: "I pre-ordered the version two Kindle a month or so before it came out. As someone who likes to read literature rather than magazines, but who reads only in infrequent bursts, I really appreciate the Kindle. I've picked it up after three months and there it is—an 80% charge. Keep in mind as well that 80% charge on a Kindle is a week or so of constant use—so it is to me very comforting to have my library of books where I can trust I can read whenever I feel like it no matter how much I've neglected the device. The weak points of the Kindle such as the lag to refresh the page are non-issues with me and the lack of color probably a benefit. Simple and single purpose, just the way I love it.

"As soon as the cellular version of the iPad came out I bought one of those as well. It is a great device which needs a bit of second or third generation maturity, but very impressive nevertheless. I was going to sell my Kindle, as it seemed redundant and second best.

"To my surprise however I slowly started to pick up the Kindle more and more often as the first 'wow' blush of the iPad wore off. Little annoyances such as the glare and the way the flipping of pages became tiresome and especially how comparatively fragile the iPad seemed to me made me realize how the Kindle is not about flash, and it can't do all those other things, but that it does that one thing so so well—that now the iPad is gone. I sold it nicely for $200 more than I paid for it. The iPad made me feel even more appreciation for how great the Kindle is for me for the kind of reading that I do, so much that now I may buy the larger version and keep both for whether I want to go light or read in a somewhat better way with the larger screen.

"The iPad is a great device. I plan to get another when they iron out the little things such as the way the keyboard doesn't work as expected in many programs. I do know now however that no matter how great the next version of the iPad, the Kindle is staying, and it is what I will do most of my reading on. Sometimes simple and single-purpose is best. Why is it that it feels like camera companies can't spare a model or two with that ethos in mind?"