Archive for the 'book' Category

It is somewhat surprising for me to read a blog post from Chase Jarvis about lighting techniques. Not because he is not knowledgeable of the topic. He is definitely a master of his craft. However, over the time it became more of his blogging style to write about something more than just photography and its technical background.  For example, he recommended Paul Arden’s book which I purchased and inspired me a lot, and in an other post he encouraged us reading blogs rather about creativity, vision, mindset and approach.

What will poor McNally do if the young Jarvis takes everything over from him?

The title of this post is a quote from Samuel Beckett that I found in Paul Arden’s It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be (recommended by Chase Jarvis) and came into my mind when saw this video of Michael Jordan.

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I read a lot about photography. Books and blogs as well. I read to learn, to improve and to get inspired. Possibly I read more than I should. As a result sometimes I get pissed off because get less and less from what I read.

I know that many people start blogging just about anything like I did with photography almost two and a half year ago: without much of experience and knowledge. And when lack of knowledge goes hand-in-hand with rock solid confidence and, I wouldn’t question that part, really hard work and enthusiasm, that very rarely results lasting quality.

Learning about the business aspects of photography has never been as easy as it is today and, due to the just explained reasons, never has required as much cautious pre-selection as today.

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Do you know this company? I’m sure you do. Last time they estimated delivering my order by April the 22nd and it actually arrived on April the 1st.  I was pleased the least to say.

That’s a great example of under promising and over delivering. Might be applied to your business as well.

The books I ordered and received were:

• The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes

and

• Monte Zucker’s Portrait Photography Handbook

More on them later.

No, I still don’t have the book in my hands. The reason for that is that Hungary is a bit too far for Amazon. I’ve already ordered the book and hopefully will receive it in a matter of few weeks.
By that time I can read only David Hobby’s writeup on the book (he had the privilege to read it in PDF format) and the surprisingly lenghty excerpt here from Peachpit.

Are you planning to buy it?

I would like to draw your attention to a book. It is the Portrait Photographer’s Handbook written by Bill Hurter.
This book about, you could have guessed, portrait photography was not designed for the absolute beginner photographer and I really doubt that it would be regularly flipped through by the experienced professionals. The target audience is somewhere in between:  it might be useful for those who have already made a few portraits, started doing the Photoshop magic and would want to develop their skills with the desire of being able to make powerful portraits.

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