The Secrets of Photography

This book is utter trash. From the poorly composed to the out of focus, this is a great book to read on ‘HOW NOT TO’.

If you want an idea of what your competition might be up to, then yeah, this book might be worth a quick view…..other than that….move on.

Most of the shots are all wrong, out of focus, bad lighting, no composition and without a single origional idea throughout the whole book.

Complete waste of money.
Rating: 1 / 5

This book is a little disappointing. There is a lot of fluff in this book, meaning sentences like, ‘From selecting the right lens to focusing, maximizing the depth of field and metering,family portraits present numerous technichal challenges that must be addressed be the professional photographer.” I guess I feel it is a lot of extra reading that is not necessary. The second half of the book gets better, so it is worth buying for some of the info it gives, but probably not worth the money that it costs.
Rating: 3 / 5

“The Best of FAMILY PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY, PROFESSIONAL TECHNIQUES AND IMAGES”, by Bill Hurter is sort of an OK book. It simply designed to give an insight into portrait photography for groups of people. There are several things that would have made this book into a great must-have book that is dog-eared for photographers to recreate that same shot. It lacks ton’s and tons of photo’s. Quite a number of photo’s are dated.

This book is intended for film and digital photographers. This is the first mistake? Why? You are an idiot to be shooting film in a digital world. A CANON 5D can regularly hold as many as hundred’s of photo’s before a single card has to be exchanged. Who wants to spend hundreds of dollars on film? The most obvious answer of all is how did my picture come out? Well, with a digital camera you can look on the back of the LCD screen and see! D’oh! Film camera’s use a 35mm full-frame format lens selection that is different from a full-frame digital sensor camera. Many digital camera’s today come with what is called a 1.6X crop factor sensor. We need to know how that is going to affect our selection of lens.

Bill goes on to talk about AF technology. If you did not know that AF technology is great these days where have you been? I mean seriously a major hello here! Image stability is talked about here. Let’s cut to the chase and talk about posing families, please! There is much discussion about film choice. OK we have already established that no one seriously uses film anymore right? But, what if you do still use film? Well your local library and college(s) have books that date back fifty years. It’s all there.

Focal length is talked about as well. Please give me details concerning digital only, please! Digital ISO settings again same thing as on a film camera. Here we dive into RAW vs. JPEG. Please Bill, Please! If you are still shooting in JPEG why in earth are you buying this book? Reformat your cards? Why would that be important? White Balance? Hey I like crazy colorz that screw up everything! Bill goes on to talk about exp-disc’s. Let me say one thing about expo-disc’s. In a word expo-disc’s are great!

Expo-disc’s are great because all you have to do is hit your white-balance button and hit custom and shoot. The great thing is all you have to do is purchase an expo-disc for all of your portrait/wedding lens. Then every time you walk into a different room, use a different lens or the lighting changes just use your expo-disc’s?

Here’s a better idea than blowing $500+ on expo-disc’s. Just buy a lally cap and set your white balance two-three times a day and presto you are done baby. How much does a lally cap cost? Thirty measly buckaroo’s. Lally caps can be purchased by visiting amazon.com or [...].

Posing, ah the good stuff! Bill advertises setting one persons head at a different height than the rest to offer an interesting perspective difference. I had/have never thought to do this. Men have no idea where to place their hands.The placement of hands could have had it’s own chapter. In order to get a 4 star rating from me, you’d need to. They want to look macho and joe-cool. And hey so do I. Don’t take my pose unless I am doing something cool with my hands. Here’s a classic tip, have the man who is being posed stick his left hand inside of the pocket of his pants, with the thumb sticking out. It’s always a winner!

Pictures of what to do with feet especially should have been included. I would have thought this would have been one of the most important considerations. The S-shaped composition form along with L and Z are talked about but no examples? Man what is this all about? A picture is worth 10,000 words here.

There is several chapters on children. This is a book on photographing group portraits! Having said this the advice given on shooting children is absolutely great. I have had so much fun shooting my niece. The book then dives into the great stuff of photographing mom, dad, the kids, and their furry friends. Now this is what I bought the book for.

Now as for lighting the book goes on to say that “some photographers use a bare-bulb flash. Please, come on Bill photographers don’t use bare-bulb flash units. Lumedyne strobes are the same as using a soft-box or a umbrella. Who on earth calls and alien bee’s a lumedyne strobe? Then Bill goes on to talk about TTL flash, now you are talking to us Bill, thanks.

The book finishes up with studio lighting. Please pay attention to the section on window lighting. It is really great stuff. This concludes my review of this book. I hope it is informative and easy to read.

Rating: 3 / 5