In every work or passion you want to pursue, there is a chance you need external influences to get better. In photography, books are a great resource. Most of the time they are written by professional photographers, then you learn from their experience. Here are five photography books for you to discover.
Lowepro Pro Messenger 160AW
Price: $159.95 US
Company: Lowepro
The Lowepro Pro Messenger AW series are camera shoulder bags. They are suitable for traveling light or for small photography assignments. They store a minimum of equipment, but just enough for this kind of photo shoot. Like many photographers, I am a bag freak and I am glad I had the chance to review the 160AW model.
Garry Fong Puffer – Pop-Up Flash Diffuser
Company: Gary Fong
Price: $24.99 US
Everyone buying an entry to mid range DSLR with an integrated pop-up flash rapidly learns they are not so great. Like many flashes on compact cameras, they point directly to your subject and are not adjustable. They also tend to blast the subject directly, making it look overexposed.
The Photographer’s Eye – Interactive edition for iPad
Company: The Ilex Press Ltd.
Author: Michael Freeman
Price: $9.99 US
When Amazon announced the Kindle with its electronic store, then Apple introduce the iBooks Store a few years later, I was feeling happy about the fact that bricks of books would become digital. But I was fast disappointed when I saw that most digital books were simply a copy of the physical books. When something goes digital, I expect a bit of interactivity.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10
Company: Adobe
Requires: multicore Intel processor, Mac OSX 10.5.8 or higher, QuickTime 7
Price: $99.99, upgrade $79.99
When Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 was released a number of years ago, I decided to buy it, even though I had no graphics experience whatsoever. I even bought a book to teach me how to use it. Sadly, I used PSE6 mainly to create coupons for my husband’s business, slightly edit screen shots I take for MyMac.com articles, and superimpose faces on other people’s bodies (Don’t ask. It’s silly.) So when the opportunity arose for me to review Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, I jumped at the chance to really sit down and learn about some of the fun and powerful techniques I could use with this software.
Keep in mind that this review is coming from a novice’s perspective. Even though I have used PSE6 in the past, my experience is so limited that I’m still considered a newbie. For a more in-depth review of PSE10 from a user who has an extensive Photoshop background, check out MyMac.com writer Donny Yankellow’s article.
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Eolake Stobblehouse joins Tim Robertson and David Cohen for a lively chat. Topics include writing machines, iPad (1 and 2) love, Photography, and much more.
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Adobe Photoshop Express
iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 4.2 or later
Version 1.5
FREE
Web site
iTunes Store link
Adobe Photoshop has been the de facto photography/image editing program for many years. However, for many people, Photoshop is either too expensive, too great of a learning curve, too overwhelming, or any combination of the above. Sometimes, all a photo needs to go from good to great is a little tweaking. Adobe heard the cries, and has developed Adobe Photoshop Express, an app that lets users edit and share images quickly and easily.
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MOO specializes in a variety of cards, using an online process. The company has a small family of cards and accessories. Read Mark Rudd’s review of MOO here.
MOO originates from England. The company now delivers to over 180 countries, and it has regional printing facilities for faster turnaround time. Web and live help are available in German, English, Spanish, French, and Italian. MOO’s USA English blog has a folksy feel to it. The company’s web site is easy to navigate and use, with one exception, described below.
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Shutterfly’s best products are custom hard cover photo books created using their online software tools. Shutterfly offers a bazillion different sorts of cards, as well as photo prints and Internet image storage
Shutterfly has soft cover and hard cover books in many sizes. Soft cover books are less expensive. When you want a personal photo book with professional presentation and impact, spend the extra money and get a hard cover book. The covers are gorgeous, and the interior pages look and feel like a real book.
Printing quality is excellent, and images are just as bright and colorful on Shutterfly’s book pages as they appear on your Mac’s display. I will never again order an iPhoto book from Apple, given the choice. The Internet is full of raves and rants for a dozen or more competing online book printing companies. Until I am proven wrong, Shutterfly is my first choice.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Learn by Video
Presented by Tim Grey and Mikkel Aaland
Produced by video2brain http://www.video2brain.com
Peachpit Press
$64.99 US, $77.99
As a digital photographer I find I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom almost as often as I use Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is the current version and is a powerful software program for digital photographers. The advantages about using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 are the non-destructive editing features, cataloging and organizing images, slideshow and web gallery options, and the ability to print from the application. I recently reviewed Adobe Photoshop CS5 Learn by Video and was impressed with this well-produced series by video2brain. This handsomely packaged 10 hour instructional DVD and 120 page reference guide is all anyone needs to familiarize themselves with the application and achieve proficiency in a short amount of time.
Captured: Lessons from Behind the Lens of a Legendary Wildlife Photographer
by Moose Peterson
Peachpit Press
ISBN: 9780321720597
Price: $54.99 US $65.99 CN
Moose Peterson is an acclaimed photographer who has devoted the past thirty years to honing the craft of wildlife photography. His primary focus is photographing endangered wildlife and North American wilderness. Moose (yes,that’s his real name) writes this hefty 396 page book in an easy-to-digest conversational style. He is a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens photographer, so the focus is on Nikon camera and lens information. The detailed digital camera knowledge he shares about his photographs can be applicable to any high-end DSLR. Many of the close-up wildlife shots are made using 200mm to 600mm lenses and most camera manufacturers have their own equivalent.
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Eye-Fi X2 Cards:
Pro X2: $149.99
Explorer S2: $99.00
Geo X2: $69.00
Connect X2: $49.00
iPhone App: FREE
The Eye-Fi Pro X2 8 GB WiFi enabled SD Memory Card
When I reviewed my first Eye-Fi card almost two years ago in February of 2009, I was amazed at what I saw. A tiny little SD memory card with a WiFi radio inside. Inside! How did they do that? I hardly believed they could squeeze it all in to that tiny little space, and I am still amazed when I see it now, with an even better radio and even more memory capacity.
If you have been hiding in a cave for the last few years or simply not paying attention to new things, Eye-Fi is exactly that, a standard SD sized flash memory card with a built-in WiFi 802.11 b/n/g radio inside the SD case. When this device is inside your camera (or powered up in a SD card reader), and in the range of either an open WiFi, or even your own locked (keyed) WiFi, the card will upload images stored in its memory onto the Eye-Fi service.
A four minute interview with our newest writer, in which Suzé discusses digital photography, Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, iPhonongraphy, book reviews, and video reviews. We hope you like our new audio content. Thanks for listening.
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New Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing
by Rob Sheppard
Lark Books
ISBN: 9781579907730,192 pages
$24.95 US, $31.95 CN
I recently purchased an Epson 3880 printer for digital black and white printing to replace my Epson 2200. The older printer consistently produced a notorious green cast no matter how often I calibrated or what ICC profile I used. Many prints showed metamerism or bronzing.
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As digital photography has rapidly increased in popularity in recent years, so have advanced photographic techniques such as High Dynamic Range Imaging, commonly known as HDR. Digital cameras are limited in the range of light intensity they can handle in a given scene. Situations with both very bright and dark areas will exceed the dynamic range capability of the camera sensor. This requires the photographer to decide whether to expose for the dark areas and blow out the light areas, or to expose for the light areas and lose detail in the dark sections of the image. In short, they have to make a compromise and choose to preserve detail in some areas of the photo, and allow it to be lost in other areas. HDR seeks to overcome this issue by allowing for a wide dynamic range within one photograph.
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Guest review by Suzé Gilbert
Book Review: The Photoshop CS5 Pocket Guide
By Brie Glyncild
Peachpit Press
$14.99 US, $17.99 CN
I recently upgraded to Photoshop CS5 and came across Brie Glyncild’s new book, The Photoshop CS5 Pocket Guide. The book’s 5” x 7” size makes it convenient to keep near the computer. This volume contains black and white photos and illustrations, and its chapters are interspersed with the author’s quick tips.
Brie Glyncild states “…that this is a pocket guide to Photoshop, not a photography primer,” and her description is apt. She begins with a simplistic and brief explanation of the tools and workspace. Subsequent chapters discuss resolution, layers, masks, resizing, tonal corrections, editing in RAW, painting, effects, preparing images for the web, printing, working in Bridge, and actions. A lot of information is in a very small book.
SlingShot 202 AW
Company: Lowepro
Price: $109.99
The Lowepro SlingShot has been a favorite of photographers since its launch. Since then, Lowepro has been busy listening to its customers and refining this popular sling-styled camera bag. The result of this collaboration is the SlinShot 202 AW. Read on to discover if the redesign was a success.
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On this episode of the MyPhotoTech Podcast – Traveling With Our Photo-Tech Gear, and I will share with you lots of tips, tricks and suggestions for the proper and optimal way to travel with your gear.
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MyPhotoTech Podcast – Real People, Real Photography
Nemo’s Ten Point Tutorial Number 12
Photoshop CS5 Workflow for Beginners — #2 — Color zinger in grayscale photo
Use and learn a new set of Photoshop CS5 tools and techniques in this lesson. Set aside an hour to complete it, and you’ll have time left over to tell your friends how easy and exciting it is.
Often an outdoor sunny day color subject has way too much contrast for you to attempt to get the lighting balanced. Don’t bother trying. Convert your photo to grayscale (black and white), because our eyes are much more forgiving of heavy contrast in grayscale pictures.
I blurred the face of this subject to protect his privacy. He was nice to agree to have his snapshot taken this morning as I passed his house.
Photoshop Lightroom 3
Company: Adobe
Price: $299.00 
Product Page
Have you ever had one of those, “game changer moments” when you sat in front of something and just said out loud or to yourself, “Oh My God”? The first time I sat down in front of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 (LR3), was one of those moments for me. There are many ways in which LR3 changes the content management game for photographers of all kinds and skill levels. Read on and discover if the improvements to this third generation of Lightroom are all that, or not.
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