I am constantly looking for new books that help me improve my photography. For me an inspirational book should either have great images or an interesting text. Concepts of Nature by famous British wildlife photographer Andy Rouse has both.

Although Andy sometimes mentions specific technical settings (like the AF mode used), this is not a purely technical book that only tells you what lens you should by or that a full frame camera has better high ISO performance than a non full frame camera. For those interesting in the equipment used for all the shots, Andy lists details like camera, lens, ISO, f-stop, shutter speed, etc at the end of the book.

As title of the book says, the book is about art. Good photography is art and so are Andy’s shot. But just describing them as good does not do the pictures justice. They are beyond good and I can’t remember any other book in what I’ve seen so many amazing wildlife shots.
Andy’s shots of gorillas, big cats like leopards and lions and his many great bird shots are simply stunning. The book contains the best shot of a Golden Eagle I’ve ever seen seen in a book. Andy’s shots of albatrosses are amazing, especially the one of the displaying Wandering Albatrosses on South Georgia.
Often Andy does not just show the animal, but also it’s habitat. In the case of the just mentioned shot of the Wandering Albatross, you can see dark clouds and a mountain in the background. The weather looks very harsh and perfectly shows in what tough conditions the albatrosses live.

Beside the stunning pictures, I really like the text that Andy has written. He is a very skilled writer and a great story teller.
The text describes his evolution as a wildlife photographer, how his style changed and what he prefers when designing a wildlife shot. He writes a lot about the importance of good light, especially what he calls “Red5″. These are the 5 minutes of really warm and red light after dawn and right before dusk.

In his images, Andy often breaks the rules of composition that are so often told in beginners books. Those rules are important, but great photographers know when to break them.

Beside the light he calls Red5, Andy also writes about shooting at home, how he likes to capture the relationship between predators and prey or how he likes to give his pictures a certain atmosphere that makes them special.

For many shots, Andy tells how he made them. He describes how he spend countless hours in a hide for several days to wait for a Golden Eagle or how he risked his life to get an unusual shot of a lion.

Andy cares more about being out in the wild and spending time with animals than about technical details of cameras or lenses. Sure, he uses good equipment, but unlike other photographers who think that having an awesome camera is more important than knowing your subject, Andy understands that his equipment is just a necessary tool to get his shot.

I myself am interested in good equipment and I am glad that I own the equipment I’ve always wanted. But when I am out and pressing the shutter button 10 meters away from a European Hare in Austria or 5 meters from an Arctic Tern in northern Germany, it doesn’t matter which camera I have. It’s the excitement of being close to an wild animal and capturing the moment.

Andy also cares deeply about the conservation of our ever more endangered wildlife and often encourages the reader to think about it.

Concepts of Nature has been the most inspirational book for me in a long time. The images are so good that I will take this book out of the shelf much more often than most other books I own.
This book makes me want to try even harder to constantly improve my skills and I think this is the best thing one can say about a photography book.

If you are interested in wildlife photography, then this book is a must read!

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Layers are one of the most important features of Photoshop. In fact, without layers Photoshop would be pretty useless for many image editing tasks.
The problem for Photoshop beginners is, that layers can be pretty intimidating at first. There are many different ways to work with layers and the possibilites of what you can do with them are practically endless.
In many Photoshop books, layers are either explained without enough detail or in a too complicated way that leaves the reader wondering what this stuff is all about.

Recently I finished reading Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature by Photoshop Guru Matt Kloskowski (author of great websites like Lightroom Killer Tips or Photoshop Killer Tips).
The book has about 250 pages and is writtin in a tutorial style. Matt describes many useful aspects of layers in a stey by step style with many examples. To get the most out of this, you should try the examples for yourself (the sample files are available for download) in front of your computer and Photoshop.
The book does not cover absolutely everything there is about layers (that would require much more than 250 pages) but it probably covers more than 95% you as a photographer are ever going to need.

The writing style of Matt is very readable and often also very funny. The book never gets boring (and this is something I rarely say about a technical book). The examples are easy to follow and after working through them, you should have a solid understanding of the power of layers. I certainly learned a lot by reading this book and found it the best explanation of layers I’ve come across so far.

Highly recommened!

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Recently, I’ve read several books on how to photograph people. One of my favorites is Face to Face: Rick Sammon’s Complete Guide to Photographing People.

The book has about 280 pages and is full with stunning pictures of people from many places around the world. The pictures are a great inspiration and alone would be worth the price of the book.

But beside the pictures, Rick Sammon also shares many of his tricks and secret on how to get better images of people.

The book is divided in five parts:

Parts 1 gives an overview of Rick’s top tips on photographing people and also explains what equipment he uses.

Part 2 covers Rick’s Photo Philosophies. This is my favorite part of the book and full of useful stuff. For example, Rick explains why placing the subject in the center is normally not a good idea, why you should shoot both horizontal and vertical frames of a subject, or when and how to pay people.
Rick urges you to always be aware of opportunities, explains how to dress your subjects, how to think creatively and how to take funny pictures.

Part 3 covers outdoor photography. Here, the author explains how to get the best light using reflectors, diffusers of fill flash. A very interesting chapter covers how to turn your garage into a photo studio without the need for expensive studio equipment. A very good and detailed chapter is the one on how to photograph festivals (using a Chingis Khan Cavalry Ride performance in Mongolia as an example).

Part 4 is all about indoor photography. Here Ricks tells the reader how to get the best lighting indoor, how to shoot silhouettes, basic flash techniques for indoor shooting, how to get great studio lighting without spending all your money, how to use mirrors or how to practice with a mannequin.

Part 5 covers Rick’s ways to enhance a picture with Photoshop. This is not a detailed introduction into Photoshop (there are ton’s of other books out there about Photoshop), but a summary of how Rick uses Photoshop to get the picture he wants. Techniques covered include how to make great Black and White pictures, softening skin, removing distracting elements and more.

In the epilog Rick repeats some of his advice and encourages you to get out and shoot and try the techniques covered in the book.

I really like the book and the authors writing style. It’s easy to read and the text is a perfect fit for the beautiful images. It’s never boring or too technical. From reading Rick’s book, it’s clear that he absolutely loves what he is doing and this is reflected in the quality of his images and his writing.

If you want to take your people photography to the next level, I highly recommend this book.

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Scott Kelby, famous for his books on Photoshop, Lightroom and other topics has also written 2 very successful books on digital photography itself. The first one, The Digital Photography Book is one of the most successful books ever published on digital photography.
In this post, I want to review The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2, which was published in 2008 and which builds on the first volume, though you don’t have to read the first volume, to benefit from this book. It can also be read stand alone (actually, I’ve never read the first volume).

The book has nine chapters:

• Using Flash Like a Pro
• Building a Studio from Scratch
• Shooting Portraits Like a Pro
• Shooting Landscapes Like a Pro
• Shooting Weddings Like a Pro
• Shooting Travel Like a Pro
• Shooting Macro Like a Pro
• Pro Tips for Getting Better Photos
• More Photo Recipes to Help you Get “The Shot”

As you can see, Scott covers many different topics. He does not cover nature photography, except landscape photography and some macro photography. But covering nature photography would probably require a whole book of it’s own.

In each chapter you find a lot of useful tips on how to improve your shots. For example, Scott explains why you should avoid the pop-up flash of your camera and how to use a dedicated flash unit to get much better results, for example through getting the flash off your camera.
Chapter 2 shows you how you can build a professional studio without spending all your money.
In the chapter on portraits, Scott explains how to use light that shines through a window, how to photograph groups of people and much more.
Another great tip I found in the book is in the chapter on landscape photography: “Find the Great Light First” is about finding great light first and then finding a subject to photograph. Many photographers always search for great subjects and then photograph them in mediocre light.

Other useful tips are what book to read next, how to shoot at night, how to choose a macro lens and much more.

I found the writing in the book very easy to follow, full of information and often very funny, too.

Who should buy this book?
If you are a full time pro, you may already know all the stuff in the book.
But if you are just starting with digital photography or already have been photographing for some time but want to learn how the “Pros” do it, then this would be a wonderful book to purchase.

Summary: For most beginning and immediate photographers, I highly recommend Scott Kelby’s book.

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In this post I want to review the book Digital Nature Photography: The Art and the Scienceby John and Barbara Gerlach.

This book, written by professional nature photographers, is a no nonsense book about how to photograph nature in the digital age. It contains twelve chapters, covering all important topics on nature photography, including the following:

• Choosing a camera
• How to use lenses
• Exposure
• Image composition
• Using Flash

and more.
The book has almost 190 pages and contains many wonderful pictures who alone are worth the price of the book as they can be a great inspiration. Most of the pictures were taken in North America, but there are also shots from other places of the world, like Africa.

This book is not a book about using Photoshop to improve your pictures. And thats a very good thing. There are already many books out there doing this. Instead, this book focuses on the photography part, on how to use your equipment most effectively to get the shots right not on the computer but when you are out in the field.

I won’t cover all that’s in the book in this review, but pick just a few things that I especially liked.

One of the best tips in the book is to became a better naturalist. Many beginning nature photographers make the mistake to think all they need is a good camera and an expensive lens. But equally important is to know your subject, be it a bird, a dragonfly or anything else. The more you know about the biology of your subject, the better your results will be. Many books don’t mention this, so I was very glad to find it in this one.

In the chapter about getting sharp images, the authors stress the importance of a good tripod. I’ve seen photographers carrying heavy lenses like a 2.8/300 (or heavier) and then mount it on a really cheap and bad tripod. John and Barbara Gerlach convince the reader that tripods are important and also explain how to choose a good one.

My favorite chapters are those on using light and on composition. Again this is not found in many other books or only treated shortly there. The image examples in those chapters are a wonderful selection of great shots that really show the various ways to use light and to compose your pictures.

A very practical chapter is the one which covers how to carry your gear in the field. The tips there are very useful, even if not all can be used by all people (like using mules and horses to carry large equipment).

I’ve read many books on nature photography and this one is definitely among my top five. I highly recommend it.

You can get if from amazon here:

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