digital photography

"Digital Photography Hacks" can be viewed as a supplement to the author's 2003 book, "Digital Photography Pocket Guide". While "Pocket Guide" is a basic introduction to digital photography, "Hacks" is a collection of real-world tips and solutions to everyday problems encountered by digital photographers. It is another addition to the growing set of "Hacks" books published by O'Reilly Media.

The 100 tips and tools are organized into 8 chapters covering camera attachments, daytime and nighttime photo secrets, flash photography, photo projects, computer-based photo processing and organizing, and a special section on camera-phone photography. A number of hacks cover traditional photographic techniques not new to digital photography but useful to any photographer who wants to improve one or two steps above mere snapshooting. The bulk of them, however, relate specifically to the new digital photography world. The most interesting are those pertaining to camera-phones which have outsold regular digital cameras in 2002. The author demonstrates how to get the best use out of camera-phones despite their limitations in resolution, power, and features. Hack #75 explains that the prime value of camera-phones is in their immediacy allowing unique opportunities to obtain images. This hack reinterprets the traditional photography maxim that the "best camera" is the one you have in your hand when a special event is occurring.

Hack #79 cleverly shows how one can communicate in a foreign country by displaying pre-loaded images in your camera to the natives in lieu of learning and speaking a foreign language. Everyone will understand the meaning of the photos. Load up your disk with images of toilets, taxi cabs, and cheeseburgers! #83 discusses how to set up and run a photo mo-blog - which is the mobile version of a traditional blog site. Portrait-taking amateurs will learn how to improve their people shots with pro-style lighting effects (#41-43) and Photoshop manipulations like whitening teeth and eliminating red eye and skin blemishes (#16, 69-70).

Learn how to add music to movies and slideshows (#61) and analyze meta-data (EXIF format) contained in most digital photo formats (#28).

This book doesn't have the natural writing flow of Mr. Story's "Pocket Guide", as the Hacks were contributed by a large handful of experts, but it is a nice resource for those many digital photographers who need guidance or inspiration in using their cameras.

When I first looked at this book, I assumed it was a hundred nifty tricks in Photoshop. Because that is the standard digital image editing tool. But in actuality, only 13 of the hacks involve it. Because digital photography is more than just editing an image.

First and foremost, it involves capturing an image, and all that this entails. From what I can tell, over half the hacks discuss this. Several are independent of whether you might be using a digital or analog camera. Like creating a maximum depth of field. The techniques for this probably predate Ansel Adams.

Story makes a good overall point in his book. Digital photography is more than bit editing of an image. Many ideas learnt over decades of photography are still applicable. Ideally, you would use Photoshop only as a last resort.

But there are some hacks about the latest hot thing. Camera phones. What these lack in resolution, they make up for in other dimensions of ubiquity and ease of use. Because of their increasing importance, Story devotes an entire chapter to them. Some of you will head straight here.

"Hacking" has a different meaning to the photographer than it does in the computer world. This book is about hacks the way it is used in the world of photography and not the way it is used in the world of computers. When a picture doesn't come out quite like a photographer intended they often make changes in the darkroom via masks, burning, and other techniques. This is photographic "hacking" - enhancing and changing your digital photographs in ways you may not have thought possible to achieve the results you want.

The first chapter focuses on digital camera attachments and how to use them to produce better results. From there the author leads the reader into various techniques of outside photography, nighttime photography, and flash techniques. Once you understand how to get the best picture it is time to change it into a work of art. For this process the author discusses the magic of Photoshop and how it can be used to achieve almost any effect you can imagine.

This is a book for the amateur digital camera user who wants to create a professional looking result. If you are an advanced Photoshop user the part of the book about camera use could be helpful but the Photoshop portion doesn't cover even a tenth of what Photoshop is able to do.

"Digital Photography Hacks" is highly recommended for the amateur digital photographer and anyone else interested in creating photographs instead of taking pictures.