lighting

I fell in love with Susan McCartney's photography books when I Mastering the Basics of Photography. This book is just as good at breaking down the elements of light into language and steps even a novice (like me) can understand. I was always frustrated trying to photograph shiny surfaces and trying to capture dramatic shadows. This book has such great tips for dealing with these situations that I actually look for challenging shots now, just to show off what I have learned about lighting.

I regret to have found this book very disappointing. Susan McCartney's book on travel photography, Travel Photography: A Complete Guide to How to Shoot and Sell, is the very best book on the subject. I've read it twice, some sections even more than twice. I purchased Photographic Lighting Simplified with the same level of quality content in mind. Unfortunately, the book is more "simplified" than what I had hoped for.

The book is very fast and easy to read, but the content is useful only to those with no experience whatsoever in photographic lighting. Susan McCartney has broad experience in lighting, and I was disappointed to find the depth of that experience is not presented in this book. For example, she talks more about traveling with strobes and using flashes for on-location travel photography shoots in her travel photography book than in this one. I would like to have seen more of that experience and knowledge related here.

A book on photographic lighting really needs to be in color with stunningly inspirational photographs. Many of the black and white pictures in this book are really dismal and even technically flawed in some cases. Ms. McCartney is a first-rate photographer and I'm sure the originals are perfect, but the black and white reproductions in this book fall short.

However, those critiques aside, if you have not studied lighting before then this book will provide a good overview for you and introduce you to some new techniques. Those with travel photography in mind should check out Susan McCartney's other book mentioned above. For some really creative lighting techniques try Gary Gladstone's book Corporate & Location Photography.

Photographic Lighting Simplified is a great book for the beginner like myself. It explains in novice language the details concerning all aspects of photographic lighting. When to use and not to use various lights depending on the situation. The book covers hotlights, flash, strobe lights and accessories. Also covered are exposer-reflective meters to manually set your camera and correct use of the Kodak gray scale for proper exposer. I read the entire 163 pages in about 3 days. The book also has 9 self-assignment for you to try out on you own. All pictures in the book include camera settings and shot detail that make it easy for you to reproduce a similar shot. All photos are in black & white except for the cover page. At first I found this distracting but then realized that black & white photos show the best contrast and light on the subjects in the photographs. I bought the book to improve my knowledge and skills to do lighting for desktop studio photos for Ebay.

Another book that I have heard about but haven't been able to track down yet is Digital Desktop Studio Photography by Rick Ashley & Dennis Curtin. Amazon does not carry this book yet.