Thursday 31 October 2013

Book ~ "100 Ways to Make Good Photos Great: Tips & Techniques for Improving Your Digital Photography" (2013) Peter Cope

From Goodreads ~ A practical, accessible guide to turning your good photographs into great ones whether you are shooting on the latest digital SLR or a camera phone! 

Discover 100 simple and fun ways to improve your photographs both in-camera and through post-processing image manipulation. Every key photographic genre is covered, from perfect portraits and the great outdoors, to travel photos and shooting at night. Filled with inspirational examples of great photographs compared against the more average images, with easy to follow techniques for how you can achieve the same results. 

Whether you are an aspirational amateur wanting to make your photographs even better, or an enthusiastic beginner who just wants to produce more satisfying results, "100 Ways to Make Good Photographs Great" will provide you with useful professional tips and techniques to take your photography to the next level.

I have three cameras ... a Canon point-and-shoot that is usually in my purse, a Nikon D5100 DSLR along with some lenses, and a Nikon CoolPix (that's in between the two) that I use often.  Needless to say, I take a lot of pictures.  Gord and I took some classes last year to learn how to (1) use our cameras in other than auto mode and (2) take photographs, not just pictures.

I'm still an amateur and like reading photography books to see what professionals take pictures of and how they do it.

This book isn't a "how-to" use your camera ... it assumes that you know about aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc.  What it does is provide 100 tips on how to take better photos.

There are eight chapters plus a glossary:
  1. Turning the Good into Great
  2. Capturing the Perfect Portrait
  3. Shooting Social Photography
  4. Photographing The Great Outdoors
  5. Taking Great Photos on Your Holidays and Travels
  6. Photographing Around the Home
  7. Shooting Night and Low Light Photography
  8. Getting the Very Best from Your Shots
  9. Jargon Buster

Each chapter has an introduction and then the tips.  There are also short pro tips and pictures as examples.  Each chapter ends with a summary with essential things to remember, things to watch out for, exposure modes, things to have in your kit bag and "good to great" tips.

I liked this book.  It's written in an easy-to-understand manner. I knew most of the things but it was a good reminder.  I did pick up some tips I didn't know before (like how to take a picture of lights at night and have them look like stars rather than blobs).

I found there was a bit too much focus on taking photos with cell phones and fixing pictures afterwards with a computer program.

I'd recommend this book if you are a basic to intermediate photographer ... you know the basics but aren't sure what to do with them.

2 comments:

Kat said...

Oooh thanks for sharing this book. DK just bought us a Canon T5i and I need to learn how to take better photographs :)

Masshole Mommy said...

I definitley need to pick up a copy of this book!!