There’s another photography book that is a constant companion beside my bed: and that’s Tom Ang’s How to Photograph Absolutely Everything.
This is a hard cover, coffee-table sized photo book on how to photograph, well, most of everything: and it gets down to even specifics like taking pictures of babies, 1 year old children, formal portraiture, family self-portraits, flower macros, gardens in full-bloom, misty woodlands, city waterscapes etc. It’s pretty thick for photography books at 384 pages (people who read books of this type will know what I mean by the 120-160 page pint-sized books that’s more common).
Now what I really like about this book though is the consistently direct advice and suggestions given on how to take pictures in each situation. There’s no idle banter: just step by step instructions. A lot of the pictures in the book are also supported by third person pictures of Ang – i.e. there was another photographer following the author showing just exactly the positioning and posture techniques he adopted in each picture.
Interestingly too, this is the only photography book I’ve got where the amazing pictures were apparently all taken by a compact camera. Yep, no DSLRs, no L glass, no 500mm lens, no f2.8 glass – no nothing. On the upside, it’s fabulously appropriate for point-and-shoot camera users, since his instructions get down to specifying scene modes (e.g. ‘landscape’, ‘sports’), but DSLR users will have to do a bit of guessing on what were the aperture and shutter-speed settings used though. Yeah, unlike the Lonely Planet guides, this book is short on including EXIF-type information on each picture. My other quibble is the size of this tome: I’d love to bring this book with me when I travel, but it’s just not possible with its hefty size and weight.
Still, there’s plenty of down-to-earth advice in this thick book, and you get a lot of ideas. The hard cover edition I bought a year ago was listed at SGD80, but there’s a paperback version available now too at SGD56 or so. Well worth every cent.
The Amazon link above has page samples too.
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