Book Description

Setting up a successful color management workflow is difficult, and attaining predictable results can be frustrating. "Color Confidence: The Digital Photographer's Guide to Color Management" is the only practical, results-oriented book that teaches you how to manage color effectively across devices (cameras & scanners, computers & monitors, and printers & other output devices) so that you can produce accurate, desirable color, every time. Highly respected digital imaging expert Tim Grey designed this accessible, striking book for busy photographers who want to get results quickly. He focuses on the essential concepts and practical information you need to make the best color decisions. Bottom line: this is a book no photographer should be without! ... Read more

Reviews (6)

The Title Tells It All
Some people shoot pictures with digital cameras, download them, print them up and are happy with whatever they get. Others complain if there is the least deviation in color between what they remember seeing and what gets printed up. It is at this latter group that "Color Confidence" is aimed.

Tim Grey, the author, is a respected teacher of Photoshop techniques and is known to many for the Digital Darkroom Questions mailing list, which many digital photographers read on a daily basis.

This book is aimed at a single issue in digital photography: how to make the output of the digital photography process, be it individual print, world-wide web, or printing press, match the color that the photographer visualized when he took a picture. Several years ago, when photographers were less sophisticated and happy with the ease of getting digital output, this was scarcely a question, but as digital photographers became more experienced (and as affordable techniques became available) more and more photographers began to ask why the output of their printers didn't look like their monitors. The field of color management was born.

With a minimum of technical jargon, the author explains the nature of color. He then tells you how to establish color profiles for input devices, like cameras and scanners, processing devices like computers, and output devices like ink-jet printers, so that all of the devices in the digital darkroom pass on information about the digital photograph that will insure consistency. For computer software, Grey assumes the use of the industry standard, Photoshop. If you use some other image processing software, you will have to interpolate from Photoshop, or find some other source of color management information.

If you read every word in this book, Grey might appear pedantic, because when he discusses using several different devices for a particular purpose, he will repeat many of the same instructions, word for word. But if you later pick up the book, while you are sitting at your computer, you know that what you are reading will be the whole story for the operation and tool that you are using, and that some important hint is not hidden elsewhere.

I?ve long considered myself to be relatively savvy when it comes to color management. However, I picked up a few tips about along the way that clearly made the book worthwhile for me. For example, I understood the function of "soft-proofing" but never really developed a regular work process dealing with this technique. Then I read Grey's discussion and a light bulb went on.

This is not exciting reading, but the author is clear and direct and moves the subject along quickly. If you need to learn about color management for digital photography, this is the book for you.

Yes, one can print photos to be proud of.
How many times have you been disappointed with your photos as displayed on the computer screen? Oftentimes they may look good on the screen but not so well once printed. Tim Grey, author of Sybex's latest book dedicated to digital enthusiasts, helps readers manipulate their digital images more efficiently so the desired output is achieved with minimal waste to your pocketbook and time. Readers are led step by step beginning with capturing color appropriately with digital cameras or properly adjusting scanners and their software to capture the best image. Outputting images, especially to your own printer, but also to professional print houses and to the web and E-mail is thoroughly reviewed. Significant discussion of techniques using advanced image manipulation software such as Photoshop is provided to help readers tweak color balance, brightness, contrast, and many other aspects to achieve the best possible image. Grey closes his book with a summary of the essential steps to achieve the best possible image. Though a CD or DVD is not included, numerous examples throughout the text well complement Grey's points.

One text paragraph illustrates Grey's purpose in writing Color Confidence: "It is often tempting to adjust the image in Photoshop when the printed image doesn't match what you see on the monitor. For example, if the print comes out too magenta, you may be tempted to adjust the color balance in the image toward green to offset the magenta. The problem with this approach is that you are making the image itself intentionally inaccurate in an effort to produce accurate results for a single output condition. What happens when you print that same image with a different printer, ink, and paper combination? You'll have to find new ways to manipulate the image in an effort to produce an accurate print. In effect, you're chasing the print, trying to find just the right way to adjust the image to make it look wrong in just the right way so the print will look the way you want it to look. This is not a good way to work with your images."

Though the publisher advertises Color Confidence as an intermediate text, I recommend to users of Photoshop Elements as well as Photoshop who want to improve the quality of their images, whether they plan output to the web or paper, to take a look at this book. This book is not for those content with the editing capabilities of iPhoto. However, after reading Color Confidence, iPhoto users might get the urge to use Photoshop Elements for image manipulation. Though I will never be a graphic artist, I look forward to reading the book again (too much information to absorb from one reading) to further advance my abilities to produce photographs for which I am proud to share.

Great book, if you don't know what you're doing
I know a lot of people who are totally lost when it comes to producing prints they like. A watercolor artist friend struggles with her Minolta 7i and Epson 2200, jumping through hoops and tweaking images in Photoshop and/or the printer driver. This book (along with monitor calibration) would solve her problems. The advice is comprehensible and comprehensive.
I have been there and done that; owned two Epson 1200s using profiles and inks from a well-known source but never achieved success. If you have felt that pain, read this book.
I subscribe to the author's free mailing list, and find that the accuracy of information in this book is actually better than that he provides online. Tim Grey knows his stuff, though (OT) he seems to be confused about imager size and depth of field.
If you already calibrate your monitor, use accurate profiles for your paper/printer/ink, and such, the incremental knowledge you'll gain from this book will be modest. The workflow I use with my Epson 7600, Bill Atkinson profiles and Eye One Display are very similar to the author's recommendations. If you have gotten that far, you don't need Color Confidence.
If what I just wrote is Greek to you, Color Confidence has the info to get you on the right track. Just be forewarned that you're going to have to fork over for monitor calibration tools or the books's suggestions won't do you much good. That will set you back 3-5 times the cost of the book. You may also have to invest in printer profiling, for $50-1,500 depending on how you approach it.
I also own Real World Digital Photography, Second Edition, which was co-authored by Grey. I'd say that both of these are quite informative if you are a novice, but less so if you are reasonably advanced in digital imaging.

Color Confidence
Most photographers agree entering the digital world can be very challenging. There is a vast amount of information to filter through. Tim Grey is an expert in that area and is up there with all the top guys in the digital world. I have personally attended one of his seminars and know for a fact that he is extremely knowledgable and most importantly a very good teacher. He has the ability to take a huge amount of information and put it into simple terms that can be understood. The topics he has covered in this book are all the critical steps that you need to know whether you start out with film or a digital capture. This book will clear up a lot of questions about working with digital images.

The best yet for digital photographers
I write reviews of books on Photoshop as part of my work, so I read a lot of them. This has to be the best I have come upon for the aspiring digital photographer. It is not for someone who just wants to take photos of their family at Disneyland, or at a wedding, but for photographers who want to get the best from their digital camera; this is a "must read." Mr. Grey describes what to do, why and what to expect, he carefully explains alternatives and warns about the pitfalls. The good illustrations reflect the attention to detail of the writing. It is clear, not too technical and very informative. You will need Photoshop to get the most from this book. If you care about your images, read this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Not only is he one of the world’s preeminent architecture photographers, Robert Polidori is also--as his popular book Havana proved--a master of urban portraiture. The Montreal-born photographer has made haunting studies of bombed-out buildings in Beirut, decaying New York tenements, Versailles rooms in dusty disarray, Brasilia's paean to spare '50s modernism, and, most recently, the abandoned, contaminated cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat. Taken together, they add to his ongoing project: the interpretation of the interrupted urban landscape.

This new monograph combines the eye of a celebrated photographer with the distinctive voice of an artist and adventurer. Each breathtaking image--meticulously selected by the photographer from his own personal archive--is accompanied by a compelling first person account, based on interviews conducted by Martin C. Pedersen, executive editor of Metropolis magazine. Polidori tells behind-the-scene stories about the making of his photographs, takes us to war-torn Beirut and Brasilia and other world capitals, talks about what makes a building photogenic, how he shoots buildings he doesn’t like, his favorite architects, and his love of mosques. A look at the world’s great cities as seen through the eyes of a sharp social observer--and a great photographer.

Often considered an architectural photographer, Robert Polidori is in fact a photographer of habitat. On the surface, his subjects are buildings. But at the core his lens is focused on the remnants and traces of living he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on façades.--The Globalist

The most interesting things are always behind us. I look at everything as archaeology.--Robert Polidori

With Martin C. Pedersen and Criswell Lapin.

Hardcover, 11.5 x 10.75 in. / 128 pgs / 60 color. ... Read more

Book Description

Flexible toes, high arches, full thighs and the seamless sheer pantyhose that adorn them; the girls in Dave Naz's world have legs that just won't quit. Unlike other compilations devoted to praising a particular body part, this collection showcases the entire woman, inviting us to see the whole person and not just the fetish object. Each model displays her own personality, her pleasure in being seen, the eternal dance between exhibitionist and voyeur, and Dave has done all the footwork. ... Read more

Book Description

Photographs of outer space--produced by earthbound and space telescopes and planet-roving satellites--have captivated a vast audience. And nowhere has this audience found more enthralling views than on Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), a website so popular that it draws well over one million hits every week. The Universe: 365 Days presents in unprecedented clarity 365 spectacular images culled from the thousands that have been featured on the site, which has been hailed as one of the best science sites by both Scientific American and Popular Science magazines.

Following the enormously successful format of Abrams' Earth From Above: 365 Days, The Universe: 365 Days has been crafted by the two astrophysicists who in 1995, in collaboration with NASA, created and continue to maintain the APOD website. Accompanying each stunning image is a short explanatory text that greatly expands the reader's appreciation of the wonders of the cosmos. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

beautiful photography
There is a website called "Astronomy Picture of the Day". The website is exactly what it claims to be. Every day the website posts a new picture related to astronomy with a description of that picture written by a professional astronomer. With the first archived photo on that website from June 16, 1995, the editors of "The Universe: 365 Days" had nearly 8 years of photographs to draw on when this volume was published in May 2003. This book can be used like a calendar because that is how this book is laid out: every day of the year has an astronomy photograph, with a description of each picture.

As someone who knows very little about the universe, or astronomy, even with the descriptions next to the pictures I still wasn't always sure what I was looking at and how one picture was truly different from another. I understand that they look different and that they are pictures of very different parts of the universe, but the details are far beyond my comprehension. What is not beyond my comprehension is the fact that these are stunningly beautiful pictures. Even simple pictures that we may have seen many times before, like a picture of our planet from space, is striking and beautiful. Others are of star clusters and galaxies that are so far away and so alien that it boggles the mind to know that there are places like this out there and we really know nothing about what it would be like to travel there.

This book can be read as a calendar, where you flip the page each day and see what new photograph is waiting. It can be read like that, but I couldn't imagine only looking at one of these pictures a day. After seeing one picture, I just had to turn the page to see what wonder was waiting for me, and almost without exception, there was a wonder on every page. Beautiful space photography (though some are on Earth, and others looking out from Earth). If that sounds interesting, this collection is probably for you.

-Joe Sherry

Illuminating !
Ahhh... The beauty of the universe. Do you think it just formed itself? After looking thru the marvelous photos in this book, do yourself a favor and read up on the continuing war between science and religion.
Here is an excerpt from the latest book by Dan Brown...

"Science may have alleviated the miseries of disease and drudgery and provided an array of gadgetry for our entertainment and convenience, but it has left us in a world without wonder. Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed. Science proclaims that Planet Earth and its inhabitants are a meaningless speck in the grand scheme. A cosmic 'accident'. Even the technology that promises to unite us, divids us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone. We are bombarded with violence, division, fracture, and betrayal. Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history? Does science hold ANYTHING sacred? Science looks for answers by probing our unborn fetuses. Science even presumes to rearrange our own DNA. It shatters GOD's world into smaller and smaller pieces in quest of meaning... and all it finds is more questions.
The ancient war between science and religion is over. Science has won. But not fairly. Not by providing answers, but by so radically reorienting our society that the truths we once saw as signposts now seem inapplicable. Religion cannot keep up. Scientific growth is exponential. It feeds on itself like a virus. Every new breakthrough opens doors for new breakthroughs. Mankind took thousands of years to progress from the wheel to the car. Yet only decades from the car into space. Now we measure progress in weeks. We are spinning out of control. The rift between us grows deeper and deeper, and as religion is left behind, people find themselves in a spiritual VOID. We cry out for meaning. There is a growing trend of people who profess to believe in UFO's, engage in chanelling, spirit contact, and out-of-body experiences- all these eccentric ideas have a scientific veneer, but they are unashamedly irrational. They are the desperate cry of the modern soul, lonely and tormented, crippled by its own enlightenment and its inability to accept meaning in anything removed from technology.
Science, the 'illuminati' say, will save us. Science, I say, has destroyed us. Since the days of Galileo, the church has tried to slow the relentless march of science, sometimes with misguided means, but always with benevolent intention. Even so, the temptations are too great for man to resist. I warn you, look around yourselves. The promises of science have not been kept. Promises of efficiency and simplicity have bred nothing but pollution and chaos. We are a fractured and frantic species... moving down a path of desruction.
To science, I say this. The church is tired. We are exhausted from trying to be your signposts. Our resources are drying up from our campain to be the voice of balance as you plow blindly on in your quest for smaller chips and larger profits. You even murder unborn children in the name of research that will save lives. But it is the church that points out the fallacy of this reasoning. And all the while, you proclaim that the church is ignorant. But who is MORE ignorant? The man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its awesome power?
Show me proof that there is a God, you say. I say use your telescopes to look to the heavens, and tell me how there could not be a God. Do you not see God in your science? Have we become so spiritually bankrupt that we would rather believe in mathematical impossibility than in a power greather than us?
Whether or not you believe in God, you must admit that when people abandon their trust in a greather power, they abandon their sense of accountability. Faith, all Faiths are adomitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable... With faith we are accountable to ourselves, to each other, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because MAN is flawed. Simply put, we people with faith belong to a brotherhood of imperfect simple souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world rapidly spinning out of control."

~ From Angels & Demons

a must have for all ages, all walks of life
This book is nothing short of phenomenal. I keep buying it for people because I know they will be enthralled. Each photograph is awe inspiring and the accompanying text just boggles the mind. You can get lost for several minutes just gazing at a single photograph, contemplating the nature of the universe. Petty concerns dissolve as you stretch your mind around the concepts so beautifully depicted. This book is a treasure to enjoy for a lifetime.

Gorgeous
You know about the Astronomy Picture of the Day website, don't you? If not, check it out; I can't post the URL here but a quick search will turn it up.

This book is a collection of some of the very best pictures from that marvellous site. Most of the pictures are images of Very Cool Stuff from around the cosmos: comets whacking into Jupiter, galaxies forming, that sort of thing. And wow, it sure is _big_ out there.

The stuff close to home is fascinating enough in its own right that the book pays for itself with just the images from within our very own solar system. The shots of the other planets and their moons are culled from the various flyby missions and, naturally, they are _way_ better than anything that was available when I was a kid.

There are a few that are _very_ close to home, and these are cool too. Some show either the Earth (from orbit) or a view of its sky (during the Hale-Bopp visitation, for example). A handful are of other things entirely (including one of the most effective Magic Eye pictures I've ever seen).

They are all of them stunning, captivating, and gorgeous. If you aren't pretty much transfixed by this stuff, then you and I probably aren't from the same homeworld.

And the short commentary that accompanies each image was written by a qualified, competent astronomer. Does life _get_ any better than this?

Don't forget to visit the website, too. There are lots more images in its archives than would fit into this book.

Amazing picturer after amazing picture
If you've spent some time on the Internet, you've come across the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APoD) website, run by astrophysicists Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. Once a day they post up a space-related picture, provide a handy description. I've said to myself on several occasions, that these guys should write a book. Well, now they have.

The Universe: 365 Days is a print version of APoD, and it's one of the most gorgeous astronomy books I've ever seen. Open it up to any page: on your right is a full-page photograph, and on your left is a paragraph description about the picture. That's it, 365 pages of description/picture, rinse, repeat. Not much else to say. If you like pictures of space and astronomy, then you're going love it, page after page.

Because there are so many photographs, the authors were able to draw from a large pool of images. So, it isn't just the same old NASA/Hubble pictures that everyone uses, there are some from more obscure observatories and even amateur astronomers. There's a handy index at the back so you seek out images by topic.

I understand why they decided to go with the whole 365 days concept; it's a connection to their website. But then, it's not like you're going to read the book one day at a time, like some kind of yearlong astronomical advent calendar.

Let me just stick my drooling tongue back in my mouth for a second and let you know my complaints with the book. First, the text is really small. Unreasonably small considering that it's swimming in white space. The layout person should have been thinking about all the people who might be reading this book, and steered well away from 9 point font. My other complaint is that it feels fragile. Imagine you're holding a stack of nearly 400 photographs bound together on the left-hand side. I'm worried that it might come apart with all the use it'll get sitting on a coffee table. I'm afraid to let my kid look through it, as she'll render it into pulp in minutes.

Still, complaints aside The Universe: 365 Days is a fantastic book. Gorgeous photographs put into context by scientists who've had years of experience boiling complex concepts into handy, bite-sized write-ups. ... Read more

Book Description

"Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images is now in its third edition and it has become the standard in photo criticism and theory courses throughout the United States. The book contains an elegant pedagogical apparatus founded on the four critical activities that Terry Barrett so ably illuminates -- describing, interpreting, evaluating, and theorizing.

Moreover, Barrett's analytical categorization of photographs into ideal types including the aesthetically evaluative and the interpretive (to cite two examples) has provided readers with a highly original and useful way to think about how photographs are made to function in the world." Louis Kaplan, Southern Illinois University ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Criticisng Criticism
A look at the subtitle to this book, "An Introduction to Understanding Images", might lead one to believe that it is about photographs and what makes them good or bad (or if there are such things as "good" and "bad" photographs). But instead it is about photographic criticism, primarily written. And even then it really doesn't tell you very much about how to write criticism yourself, or how to interpret what you read, or how to develop patterns of thought that would enable you to criticize in a useful fashion. Instead most of the book is concerned with the pigeon holes into which different kinds of photographic criticism can be put.

An unstated thesis of this book seems to be that the criticism of photographs is an art form itself. Certainly anyone who has read something like Walter Benjamin's "the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" might agree. But if it is an art, then it has both form and content, and any book claiming to teach one about the art (I almost said craft) had better address those points. To know that there are theoretical schools like Postmodernism or Feminist Theory is useful to those trying to organize photographic criticism and may be helpful to the photographic critic who is trying to decide what his own approach is, but knowing that these schools exist does not help a critic as much as a knowledge of how to look at a picture and organize a written commentary.

Fortunately, the book has a number of examples of written criticism, including several examples of different critics addressing the same picture. Unfortunately most of the criticism addresses the content of the photograph without considering how the form relates to the content or how, as Mark Schorer has said, technique leads to discovery. For example, Ansel Adams' photographs rely upon the range of light from the whitest whites to the blackest blacks to make their statements about the grandeur of the American wilderness. Unfortunately, nothing in this book considers photographic technique for the critic, although there are plenty of opportunities. For example, there is an ambiguous picture by Robert Doisneau taken in a Paris Café showing a younger women and an older man. The picture is grainy and the depth of field shows the women more sharply then the man. Both of these techniques should contribute to the possible interpretation of this photograph, and yet they are not mentioned.

I think the photo critic who wants to improve his art would be far better served by learning something about photography, and then reading actual criticism, like John Szarkowski's "Looking at Photographs". "Criticizing Photographs" should only be considered as a supplement to such studies.

useful and excellent book for students of photography
I have read Persian (Farsi) translation of the 2nd. edition of this book. Thanks to Mr. Barrett and the translators of the book. It helped me to understand how to criticize photographs and I found it a unique book in this field. After searching in Internet I found out that Mr. Barrett Has revised the book in ashort periodof time. I suggest, as a student of photography in university, to all studentd in the world to read the book. Again thanks to Mr. Barrett.

"It takes more time to make a picture than to appreciate it"
This is an excellent book.

These are some questions the book deals about: How a photograph is made? What are its purposes? How should its context be considered? Was that photograph made or taken?

In this book several criteria (even opposite ones) about photographs are also analyzed and compared, leaving to the reader the decision about the one(s) to take. The process of understanding a photograph is not simple, but this book is a nice guide to follow.

At the end of the book, examples of reviews are included, as a reference not only for students, but also for the person who simply would want to talk about a photograph. Moreover, advice concerning the redaction is also given.

A treasure trove of definitions, examples, and ideas...
A diversity of critical voices and photographic approaches is explored, giving the reader access to a rich world of creative thoughtŠBarrett defines criticism as "informed discourse about art to increase understanding and appreciation of art." He organizes his treatment of the four major activities of criticism‹describing, interpreting, evaluation, and theorizing‹which in turn address four basic questions: What is here? What is it about? How good is it? Is it art? ŠThe book provides in two short appendixes, practical advice on writing about photographs and on conducting casual and directed discussion of photographsŠ Monterey Peninsula College, Anne Canright

A framework which can be used with any visual medium...
The book is itself an excellent introduction to that process of questioning which constitutes the acquisition of meaning in modern contexts. It discusses issues such as feminism, postmodernism, and the disputes surrounding artistic controversy and censorship. It bristles with penetrating accounts by critical writersŠOne of the brilliant strengths of this book is that the reader actively participates in the critical process by witnessing it in action through the minds of contemporary writers and photographersŠ Canadian Review of Art Education, Donald Berglund ... Read more

Reviews (4)

A Smile Makes All the Difference
Who can resist a book with a title like Naked Happy Girls? And it pretty much lived up to my expectations.

Too many photographers of nudes forget how important the facial expression can be. After awhile you get tired of seeing women with these serious "arty" expressions. You just want to enjoy the female form and get the impression that the woman being photographed delights in sharing with you. And though there are serious expressions here, Mr. Einhorn achieves his greatest effects in the relaxed attitudes and the smiles.

Though there is very little text in this well-made little volume, I also enjoyed that he gave a brief paragraph before each selection of pictures telling the model's name and a little bit about her. This increased the relaxed atmosphere of the book for me.

If there is a weakness in the book for me, it is a personal one. I am not very fond of tattoos and many of these women have very prominent and, in some cases, extensive tattooing which ruins the beauty of the form. Still, this is a small complaint and many of the subjects here--Cara, Christina, Diana, Jen, Julia, Kaiama, Tamara, Thuc (my personal favorite) and Chadia--are astoundingly beautiful; especially when they smile.

A small and happy B&W photo book
The book "Naked happy Girls" by Andrew Einhorn is printed in Germany and published by Goliath Verlag.
The size is a petite 195 x 145 x 35 mm and the book has 368 numbered pages. The quality is good and the pages are bound.

Several models (almost 40) are portrayed and all photos are monochrome. The models pose mostly nude with only a few shots veiled in clothing.
A chapter is reserved for each model, with short descriptive forewords. From the models point of view this is a sort of mini-portfolio, and I think this is a good approach.

The relaxed and mostly happy photos and models within have some similarities (apart from their natural beauty); several of the models have cats as pets, many have tattoos and some smoke.(quit; it's deadly unhealthy!)

Some of the photos show (deliberate) movement and are partially blurred. There are several serial pictures which could easily be consecutive shots from the negative.
Part of the relaxedness stems from the fact that the photo session is done in the models own surroundings, mostly the home. Some of the models photograph the (nude)photographer during the shoots but he can be seen in only a few of the pictures. The last numbered page in the book has a nude (genitals covered) photo of the photographer himself.

This is a very compact set filled a lot of photographs by Mr. Einhorn, some easily passed and some very interesting. The price marked on the book (37.95 USD - 27.90 EUR) is a good one and it seems Amazon.com offers it even for less.

My personal favourites are; "Andrea" on page 30, "April" on page 45, "Cara" on page 63, "Hil" on page 145 (left), "Julia" three pic' set from page 198 to 199, "Maya" on page 263 and 267, last but not least "Thuc" four pic' set from page 328 to 329.

Robie Kulokivi
weretco@nettilinja.fi

Happy naked endearing durable memorable women
Having worked in bookstores for more than a dozen years, I've seen my share of nude photography books. In most, the models between the covers look sullen and bored; often the best photo is used on the cover. Though amusing to browse, few are worth buying. Einhorn's "Naked Happy Girls" (what a great title) is a rare exception. Andrew's subjects are relaxed and comfortable with their bodies and their nudity, enthusiastic to be posing. The individuality of each woman is glimpsed in their eyes, their smiles, their body language and (quite often) in their surroundings. In "Happy" one meets many wonderful women - there's Hil (the half-Chinese/half-Jewish cover girl), Gabby (an incredibly sexy Argentinian), half-Chinese/Austrian Julia with her sweet smile and my favourite, Bex: singer, comedian, actress, writer, with a beautiful smile and real woman's body. The slight embarassment apparent in her face only makes her more endearing to the viewer - what a sweetie! You are sure to discover your own favourite(s), as Einhorn's models are anything but the usual selection of anorexic white women. "Naked Happy Girls" is a durable collection that will make you smile each time you pick it up.

beautiful, sensual, somehow innocent
Andrew Einhorn has a knack for photographing naked happy girls. His subjects move around their New York apartments, joyful, smiling, and in the glimpse these photographs give, nude.

Beautiful. Unique. ... Read more

Book Description

World’s first book written to illustrate the on-camera spot metering technique for 35mm, Digital, and Medium Format photographers:

All types of metering systems used in different cameras (with the exception of the on-camera spotmeter operated by a skilled photographer) use a "cookie-cutter" approach to photographic exposure. What this means is the camera meter measures the various tones of your subject, and then averages all of the tones in order to come up with an overall exposure. Sometimes the overall exposure works and sometimes it doesn't. With this approach, the ball is in the camera's court and in many instances the photographer has no hand in the final look of the image. With on-camera spotmetering, the photographer uses a "tailored" approach to find the correct exposure for a very specific subject. With this approach, the skilled photographer interprets the spotmeter readings from the subject and establishes the correct exposure that captures the desired image (what the eye sees) on film. The consistency and flexibility of the narrow-angled spotmeter makes it the most powerful and versatile exposure tool in existance today. The only catch in using a spotmeter is that the photographer must have the skill to use this powerful tool correctly and effectively. The Confused Photographer's Guide to On-Camera Spotmetering does just that! It is simple, easy-to-follow, and uses a common-sense teaching approach to the material. With more than seventy full-page illustrations, it is designed to get the beginner and the intermediate photographer started in a couple of days. I assume that you have a camera with a built-in spotmetering (partial metering) feature. I also assume that you have a ninth grade education and are willing to learn. To facilitate your learning process, I have included a two page cheat sheets for each of the following cameras: Canon EOS 10D Digital Slr, Canon EOS 20D Digital Slr, Canon EOS 3, Canon EOS A2/A2E, Canon EOS Elan 2E, Canon EOS Elan 7E, Canon EOS Rebel 2000, Canon EOS Rebel Ti/300V, Canon PowerShot G3 Digital, Canon PowerShot G5 Digital, Minolta Maxxum 5, Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta Maxxum 9, Minolta Maxxum StSi, Nikon CoolPix 990 Digital, Nikon CoolPix 995 Digital, Nikon CoolPix 4500 Digital, Nikon CoolPix 5700 Digital, Nikon Coolpix 5000 Digital, Nikon Coolpix 8700 Digital, Nikon D70 Digital Slr, Nikon F4, Nikon F5, Nikon F100, Nikon N50, Nikon N55, Nikon N60, Nikon N6006, Nikon N65, Nikon N70, Nikon N75, Nikon N80, Nikon N8008s, Nikon N90/N90s, Pentax *ist, Pentax *ist-D Digital SLR, Pentax 645N Medium Format, Pentax MZ-S, Pentax PZ-1P, Pentax ZX-5N, and Sony DSC-F717 Digital. If your camera is not listed here, you will still be able to learn the technique and apply it successfully. ... Read more

Reviews (30)

An Excellent Primer on Achieving Accurate Exposure
The Problem: How to get your camera to accurately expose for scenes of widely varying colors and contrast when your camera's built in meter can only see the world as 18% Gray?

The Answer: Read this book!!

In one bold stroke (one brief, lucid book) Mr. Farzad has completely de-mystified the technique of achieving proper exposure on color slide (and negative) film. His explanations are quite clear and simply presented without sacrificing the more subtle aspects of the "art" of exposure control. The book clearly explains the power and limitations of the on-camera spotmeter, basically teaching you how the meter "sees" the world. Once armed with this knowledge it is an easy step to then understand the proper use of exposure compensation in order to produce the kind of pictures that you want. Reading the book is like having a private lesson from the kind of teacher who can make even the most complex subject seem utterly simple. I particularly liked the analogies and graphics that he used to reinforce the concepts. The book can be easily read in a few hours and they are hours well spent. In addition, the book contains appendices with additional more advanced material (if desired) as well as exposure "cheat sheets" for most of todays available 35mm SLR's. In my opinion, reading this book is the quickest and cheapest path to improving your images. It should be the first book you read after the camera manual.

THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ!
Bahman Farzad is a marvelous teacher. If he can teach me he can teach anyone. I have been taking photos for 20 years and never knew how to do it correctly. I bought high end cameras and used them in Programmed Auto mode. I went digital a few years ago and did the same thing....Programmed Auto. I recently purchased a Nikon 5700 and have been stuggling with it. I was ready to give up. Then someone told me about this book. It has made all the difference imaginable. I had to reread some but finally the "lights went on". For taking digital or film photographs this is a book that everyone who picks up a camera should read. Actually I bought both of his books and don't regret it for a moment.

You can have all the camera technology money can buy but if you don't know the basics.......why bother.

Don't get me wrong...I am not Ansel Adams. But I do know how to take photos in Manual mode, spot meter and make correct exposure decisions all because I read these books.

Too much paper for too little concept
I know spot metering is becoming a luxury in many consumer grade cameras and only true hobbyist would acknowledge its value in existence. However, this book simply uses too much real estate to decribe a concept that could have concisely decribed in half of the space provided. There isn't enough color examples to illustrate how to take readings in real life situations. A substantial section to describe individual camera operation is not that useful since it duplicates what should have provided from the owner manual of the camera.

Great book!
This is a great book. It teaches step by step and with good examples and exercises in every chapter. Before reading the book I knew almost anything about sportmetering and kept using centerweighted and matrix metering, both are Ok and have their own particular uses but now spot is my choice. Worth the price and highly recommended!

The Best Book on the Subject of Spot Metering!
Too many photo "how to" books slide right over the importance of metering, especially spot metering. You wonder why your photos lack the detail and color that your remembered when you shot that picture. This book is wonderful. It is the only book that I have come across that explains in great detail how the camera works and how to determine the exposure you desire using the spot meter. You will be amazed at how much better your photos will be if you turn off that automatic stuff and let your brain decide what your exposure should be. After you have read those books about aperture, shutter speed and depth of field (they all seem to read the same), read this book to learn how to expose/meter correctly. I am so glad that I did! ... Read more

Book Description

Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible—but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests, the last in 1992. 100 Suns documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with one hundred photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.

The title, 100 Suns, refers to the response by J.Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One . . . I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 Suns likewise confronts the indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were conducted either in Nevada or the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test, its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location. The enormity of the events recorded is contrasted with the understated neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions are pictures of the awestruck witnesses.

The evidence of these photographs is terrifying in its implication while at same time profoundly disconcerting as a spectacle. The visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the chilling facts provided at the end of the book in the detailed captions, a chronology of the development of nuclear weaponry and an extensive bibliography. A dramatic sequel to Michael Light’s Full Moon, 100 Suns forms an unprecedented historical document.

... Read more

Reviews (10)

Beautiful, amazing, must see
A very beautiful book presented as large prints, stunning photographs detail the very primal and mythological nature of the nuclear explosion. There is nothing to compare these photographs to in their grandness they make brilliant destructive weapons seem almost beautiful in their conception. An amazing work, the photos are large the way they should be and you will not find a similarly themed coffee table book anywhere. A true gem.

Seth J. Frantzman

To change the nature of what it is to be human
Andrei Sakharov once wrote that a very large nuclear war would be a calamity of indescribable proportions and absolutely unpredictable consequences, with the uncertainties tending toward the worse. As a university student I have collected over the years many dozens of nuclear test photographs and with each viewing, it is possible for a person to change. This collection of photographs is nothing short of beautiful, but at the same time horrifying in its capabilities. If you read through this book, you will not come out the same person.

How We Won The War
These images of American above-ground nuclear tests are indeed terrifyingly beautiful, and beatifully terrifying. Seeing the massive energy of the atom unleashed, in the archetypical mushroom cloud, is an arresting experience no matter how long ago these photos were taken. The images are rather samey, save for some that show oddly botanical detail of some clouds, probably due to water vapor. The test blasts have retro-sounding Army code names like FIZEAU, YANKEE, BAKER, MAGNOLIA, and etc.

There is no visual perspective-big and small blasts seem the same size due to different camera distances. Some images taken from high-speed time lapse films seem like giant bacilli. Some, irrespective of kilo- or megatonnage, seem like they are splitting the heavens.

Hats off to all the servicemen who were subjected to these tests. It probably wasn't nice for the Pentagon to subject these men to these hazards, and I echo the wish that it never has to happen again. But I do appreciate their sacrifice, because I think it was well worth it.

The author tosses in a sneer at the Strategic Defense Initiative in his end of book timeline. But Reagan understood that nuclear weapons could not be un-invented, only rendered obsolete. Like it or not, nukes are a fact of international life, and a wise leader will not try to wish them away.

The author wants to evoke a Strangelovian mood, but it's too late for that. It makes a difference, whether nuclear superiority resides with free countries or tyrants, now as well as in the Fifties and Sixties. America's nuclear arsenal kept the Soviets and their proxies from gobbling up even more nations than they actually did. The fact that America won the Cold War is, once and for all, A Good Thing, and it was these weapons, along with the MAD doctrine, that helped win it. Better MET than red.

Excellent!
I couldn't put it down. The photos are excellent, the info in the back is captivating, and I hope there is never another nuclear explosion to photograph!

Eerie, haunting, horrible and beautiful
I appreciate the nature of these images more having read Richard Rhodes' "Making of the Atomic Bomb" many years ago. Without a doubt, what is documented here is the overt potential for total global annihilation by nuclear hellfire, but what is also documented are the direct descendants of one of the most impressive scientific and engineering achievments of all time.

Knowing that these images represent the ability to destroy on a massive scale, one might find it hard to divest themselves of their instinct to be horrified and shun these pictures, but if you can do so, I think you'll find a great collection of some of the most stark, eerie, organic and beautiful images of our recent secret history. The fact that these pictures were taken for documentation purposes, rather than those of art, makes the dichotomy between the beauty and the horror of this book even more apparent.

Well worth the simoleons. ... Read more

Book Description

There’s no more comprehensive and invaluable guide to the use and control of color in digital photography, and print, Web, and multimedia design. This volume brings a fresh perspective
to common color problems, explaining exactly how we see color, what the differences are between human and camera perception, and how to work with a color wheel.There’s a full discussion of display issues, including monitor calibration and resolution, color palettes, and consistency across varying platforms, operating systems, and software.A skills “toolkit” provides a detailed look at both computer hardware and image-editing software, and a hands-on workshop provides lessons in adjusting skin tones, retouching and restoring archived photos, and dealing with landscapes, fashion, still lifes, and more.
... Read more

Reviews (2)

awesome book
I have been printing and toning for quite a few years but have been surprised at what a lot this book still had to teach me!

All other books on this subject that I have read have been sadly short on vital details. This book is a superb exception to this common fault. The information is a model of clarity and easy to understand both for beginners and seasoned printers like me. The images are a great bonus too as they not only instruct but inspire. I am so grateful to this author for this lovely book and the great amount of work that obviously went into it, and for sharing this information in such an unselfish way. An awesome book - thank you.
H.K.

The best yet
The best Rudman book yet and by far the best available on Toning. At last a toning book that takes me both wide and deep, with beautiful pictures into the bargain.

I agree with the photoeye review - this is definately one of the best technical photo books I have seen. It is easy to read and yet tells all (unlike so many!!)

I love the way it teaches at different levels from novice to expert - why can't all teaching books be like this?

A great book ... Read more

Book Description

Here is an authoritative, comprehensive, practical resource for understanding the ideas, images, history, and processes of color photography. It shows readers how theory relates to practice with hands-on examples and activities and includes a diverse portfolio of work from 200 photographers along with their commentary. A tear-out 18% gray card, color checker, and sliding gray scale (items that bought separately would cost more than the book!) are also included. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Useful thorough text
If you want to get a quick grasp of color photography - theory, technique, history etc... this is the right book for you. It is simple and straight forward. The format is a bit to text bookish but after all it is a text book.
I highly recommend this book.

A great guide for beginners and advanced
This book is great for those just begining color photography or those who wish to improve thier techniques. It'll teach you everything you need to know, including using color as a fine art. I would definity recommend! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great Book
If you're a new photographer and you need to know when/how to add color into your photographs, this is the book for your. Tons of pictures, how the pictures were taken, and why the picture is so nice. Written in languag a beginner will undstand, but transforms your photography into something great! ... Read more

Amazon.com

In Full Moon, one of the best science photography books ever published, Michael Light presents a voyage in images to the Moon and back. Light took NASA's master negatives of photos taken by Apollo astronauts and scanned them electronically. The resulting pictures are so vivid they seem more clear than real life. Light orders the photos sequentially, selecting the most arresting images from each mission, to create a truly cinematic experience. In the first section, depicting blastoff, you can almost feel the violent shaking of the rocket as it strains to escape Earth's gravity. Then you see the quiet stillness of weightlessness, the astronauts' view down at a perfectly silent Earth, boundless oceans contrasting with bright white clouds. A spacewalk adds vertigo--the astronaut looks fragile and very alone as he floats outside his capsule far above his home planet. Then comes the waiting, as the long voyage toward the Moon continues.

As you watch the cratered surface get closer and closer, you have no sense of scale until you see the miniscule silver and gold lander dropping gently to land on the Moon. Leaving the cluttered interior of the capsule in bulky, awkward suits, the astronauts bring delicate tracings of color--gold on the lander; red, white, and blue on the spacesuits' flag patches--to this black-and-white world. Five huge gatefolds in this section give you indescribable views of the intricately scarred surface of the Moon.

You return to space for the reuniting of the lander and capsule, and a repetition of the tedious journey back home. Finally, you watch a chaotic splashdown in the riot of colors that is Earth.

A nice section in the back of the book explains each photo with a detailed caption, and an essay by author Andrew Chaikin (A Man on the Moon) adds more written context to this stunning visual experience. The book is printed on very high-quality paper, with matte black frames for the photos and a gorgeous, wordless cover. Every space fan should have a copy. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Reviews (52)

The best space picture book ever
This is a fantastic book! Who would have thought to use actual NASA negatives, a little photo technology, and presto, create a stunning book of Apollo photos? This is a great addition to anyone's personal library. However, I was slightly dissappointed. It says that the author wanted to avoid the more famous pictures, like the one of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. But why? I think the famous ones need to be seen like you are actually there instead of yellowed fourth and fifth generation duplicates more than the "never-before-published" photos. Other than that small dissapotinment, you ought to get it.

Breathtaking collection of moon/Project Apollo photos
This is a gorgeous collection of photographs celebrating the Apollo missions to the moon. The photos are huge, rendered in beautiful detail, and are marvelously selected to provide almost the experience of going and being there. Some almost cheat a little bit: larger and larger photos of the moon to indicate the trip there, and likewise with the earth on the trip back. The photos from the moonwalks are wonderful, though, and frequently ones I've never seen before (which is saying something). You can see each footprint and rover track. This is a book I'll be perusing again and again.

Simply brilliant
This is a superb pictorial record of man's journey to the moon.

The photographs are simply stunning, detailed, and beautifully bound.

Simply brilliant.

The Perfection of Apollo
The moon landing is the greatest thing this country has even done and Michael Light, like no one before him, indelibly captures the glory and majesty of the Apollo program. Drawing from NASA's stock of thousands of photographs, Light takes us on a hypothetical moon voyage from launch to splashdown. The flames of a Saturn booster are juxtaposed with the unreal contrasts of the lunar surface. Such a collection of space photography is an unprecedented event.

His achievement is all the more impressive when one considers that the photographs he has compiled were not strictly the work of professionals, but rather the work of astronauts -- scientists, pilots and engineers who captured the beauty of an alien world as well as any painter could hope to do.

Full Moon
A voyage to the Moon & back: a stunning, mysterious, elegant sequence of 145 photographs-most of them never before published-selected from 32,000 taken by the Apollo astronauts & preserved in the NASA archives. Chosen by Michael Light & arranged to show us a composite voyage, infinitely more immediate & moving than any special-effects simulation we have seen, these breathtaking photographs reveal the experience of space travel in all its audacious splendor. Here is the baptism by fire at liftoff; the vertiginous experience of space-walking; the utterly incomparable emptiness of the lunar landscape. We see the Moon's surface irrevocably changed by the arrival of men & their equipment; & the glowing blue ball of Earth, indescribably beautiful at such enormous physical & psychological distance. Wonderful in the truest sense of the word, Full Moon makes astronauts of us all, allowing us to see one of the most extraordinary journeys of all time through the eyes of the men who made it. ... Read more

Book Description

Since 1988, Larry Sultan has returned time and again to photograph on porn sets in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley--the Silicon(e) Valley of the porn industry. But The Valley is by no means a documentary on porn filmmaking. Rather, it is a dense series of pictures of middle-class homes invaded by the porn industry. Sultan's lens focuses on pedestrian details--a piece of half-eaten pie, dirty linens in a heap, "actors" taking a break--that offer clues to a bizarre other-world. The lush and intricate images adroitly play with artifice and reality, adding up to rich, elliptical narratives that circle around the concepts of "home" and "desire." These images of homes and gardens, porn actors and film crews, studio and location shootings are an ambiguous meditation on suburbia and its trappings, family and transgression, loss and desire, the utopias and dystopias of middle-class lifestyle. The Valley and its many-layered photographs outline the complexity of domestic life at the beginning of the 21st century, opening up new perspectives for photography through its innovative combination of staged and documentary photographs. In 1998, an English magazine asked me to go on a porn set. I flew down to Burbank Airport with my wife, and we went to the house they'd given me the address of. It was a dentist's house on Van Alden. That name had all kinds of connotations when I was in high school. Because the Valley is so haunted for me by the ghosts of childhood, all of these street names have Proustian connotations. All I have to do is to say: Havenhurst, Van Alden, Vineta, Dubois, and a flood of associations comes back to me. [...] After the first five minutes of the strangeness of it all, I started to look around, going to the bedrooms, wandering through the house. It felt like a permission to go into a house in L.A. and to imagine how someone would live their life in this house. I made the pictures for the magazine. I left and thought, "This is it, this is what I have to do."--Larry Sultan

Hardcover, 14.5 x 11 in./176 pgs / 90 color. ... Read more

Book Description

Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi captures America's iconic yet oft-neglected "third coast." Soth's richly descriptive, large-format color photographs present an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes, and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, Sleeping by the Mississippi elicits a consistent mood of loneliness, longing, and reverie. "In the book's 46 ruthlessly edited pictures," writes Anne Wilkes Tucker, "Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex." Like Robert Frank's classic The Americans, Sleeping by the Mississippi merges a documentary style with a poetic sensibility. The Mississippi is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created out of a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust. The coherence of the project places Soth's book exactly within the tradition of Walker Evans' American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans.--Anne Wilkes Tucker Essays by Anne Wilkes Tucker and Patricia Hampl. Clothbound, 11.25 x 10.75 in. / 120 pgs / 46 color. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A Guide For Color Photographers
Henry Horenstein, author of BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY: A BASIC MANUAL, a book often used as a photography text book, has a similar book on color photography. COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY: A WORKING MANUAL offers the same excellent how-to information provide in the black and white counterpart. The book contains many of Horenstein's excellent photographs and offers information regarding filters and developing color prints. While it contains some information on color transparencies (slides), it is somewhat scant and may in the long run be more helpful for printmakers. At a time when digital photography is all the rage, this book is not obsolete since Horenstein's expertise will help ant photographer, no matter what the medium.

Great Book for Beginners and Intermediate Students
This book is well-written and lavishly illustrated with good-quality color photographs from a number of well-known contemporary photographers. The basic physics of color theory and color perception are well laid out. The text and explanations are easy to follow, even for a novice. Having taught color photography for a number of years, in the US and in France and Italy, I have found that this text to be the most consistently useful for my students.

Excellent book!
Much like his Basics of B&W photography Horenstein 's Color photography manual is a easy to read, is filled with excellent information and contains tons of photographs that inspire his readers. In short, this book is perfect for anyone beginning in color photography. ... Read more

Book Description

"At least a dozen of Helen Levitt’s photographs seem to me as beautiful, perceptive, satisfying, and enduring as any lyrical work that I know. In their general quality and coherence, moreover, the photographs as a whole body, as a book, seem to me to combine into a unified view of the world, an uninsistent but irrefutable manifesto of a way of seeing, and in a gently and wholly unpretentious way, a major poetic work." (James Agee)World-renowned for her iconic black-and-white street photographs, New York City’s visual poet laureate Helen Levitt also possesses a little-known archive of color work, which has been collected for the first time in Slide Show, her third powerHouse Books monograph. In 1959, and again in 1960, Helen Levitt received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation to photograph in color on the streets of New York, where she had photographed two decades earlier in black-and-white. But tragically, the best of these pioneering color pictures were stolen from her apartment in 1970 and she had to start over again. In 1974 the new work was shown as a continuous slide projection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art—an early example of a slide show presentation by a museum and one of the first exhibitions of serious color photography anywhere in the world. Slide Show presents more than one hundred photographs—including eight surviving images from the 1959–60 series—more than half of which have never been exhibited or published before. This impressive monograph is a worthy successor to her magnum opus, Crosstown (powerHouse, 2001), which included the largest collection of her color pictures to date, and to her more intimate volume of black-and-white work, Here and There (powerHouse, 2004), which presented more than eighty "unknown" Levitts taken over six decades. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

breathtaking
i just got this book as a present, and we're getting ready to go. very reminiscent of galen rowell's work (high praise) with lots of dawn/evening atmospherics. but this one is full of double page panoramics - nothing is lost in the crease - of the incredible australian landscape. get another book if you want people, animals or cities.

Incredible!!
If you want to go or have ever been to Australia this is a must have book. It will intise you to visit or will remind you of all the natural beauty this amazing country has to offer. Peter Lik is a truley amazing photographer I have been to his galleries in Cairnes and Port Douglas in Australia and his work is breath taking. www.peterlik.com Also you can see what an amazing deal this is here at Amazon.com, this b