Good photography books?

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Doog

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I'm not an avid reader but I was given an Amazon voucher as a present to pick up a good photography book. Have you any recommendations? I'm not a beginner to photography so please no beginners books. Thanks.
 
what area are you interested in ?
 
Photography book as in Imagery. As in Technical text books, or as in academic books?
 
Oh, I don't know, I don't specialise but I like reportage and wildlife, birds and macro. Anything in those fields you'd recommend as a good read?
 
Reportage/Documentary:

Robert Frank - The Americans
Kirsten Lubben - The Magnum Contact Sheets
William Purcell - Steve McCurry : The Iconic Photographs.

Not really into wildlife, birds or Macro, but those three are tremendous starts to reportage.
 
Doog said:
Oh, I don't know, I don't specialise but I like reportage and wildlife, birds and macro. Anything in those fields you'd recommend as a good read?
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for wildlife, any of the andy rouse books are interesting - i particularly like 'life in the wild, a nature photographers year'
 
Thanks everyone. I'll try to get a look at those today.
 
As above, Michael Freeman does some good tutorial books.
Pookey's ones are great classics, have a look also at Orvell, M. (2003) American Photography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Reportage/Documentary:

Robert Frank - The Americans
Kirsten Lubben - The Magnum Contact Sheets
William Purcell - Steve McCurry : The Iconic Photographs.

Not really into wildlife, birds or Macro, but those three are tremendous starts to reportage.
Click to expand...

I always find myself coming back to The Americans every few months. The sequencing is perfect. It's a bit like resetting my eyes after being bombarded by the random 'feed' of social media.
 
If you like new your street photography, check out Cheryl Dunn, http://everybodystreet.com/
an interesting film of current and famous new york photographers.
Other photographers, William Klein, (there's a couple of youtube videos of the BBC programme about him), Bruce Davidson
Closer to home - Martin Parr - The last resort and John Gay - England observed are great books
 
Byker28i said:
If you like new your street photography, check out Cheryl Dunn, http://everybodystreet.com/
an interesting film of current and famous new york photographers.
Other photographers, William Klein, (there's a couple of youtube videos of the BBC programme about him), Bruce Davidson
Closer to home - Martin Parr - The last resort and John Gay - England observed are great books
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I asked this question in the thread about this a while back but didn't get a response. Is this worth buying for the $13? The trailers certainly looked interesting when it first came about.
 
I bought it - thought it interesting and didn't mind the money. I have it on the ipad but ti wouldn't run on my old mk1, I had to use my wifes latest to view it.
 
Thanks. I think I might give it a go then. I have the latest iPad so shouldn't be a problem. Can stream it to Apple TV too.
 
I've just ordered Gregory Heisler, 50 Portraits. It has fantastic reviews. Looking forward to getting my paws on it after much deliberation over iBooks edition or hardback.
 
My Robert Frank The Americans book arrived today.

It really is a fantastic book. How he links photographs together is wonderful. 'Charity ball - New York City' and 'Cafateria - San Francisco' really stand out.

Looking forward to having a long read.

Cheers.
 
posiview said:
My Robert Frank The Americans book arrived today.

It really is a fantastic book. How he links photographs together is wonderful. 'Charity ball - New York City' and 'Cafateria - San Francisco' really stand out.

Looking forward to having a long read.

Cheers.
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Might look at this next. 50 portraits by Heisler is so good. I'm about 23 portraits in so far. Amazing photography with some good stories to accompany them. He tells of his failures and worries on particular shoots as well as the success. A great read so far. And the images look great. So glad I didn't get the digital version now.
 
posiview said:
My Robert Frank The Americans book arrived today.

It really is a fantastic book. How he links photographs together is wonderful. 'Charity ball - New York City' and 'Cafateria - San Francisco' really stand out.

Looking forward to having a long read.

Cheers.
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Nice, how much did that cost you. Everytime I've looked they've been expensive
 
Many a book is full of good photographs without the photographer's work being the subject of the book, which may be documentary about something else.

Bruce Chatwin took a Leica along on various far travels and had a good eye. Galen Rowell did some punchy landscape stuff with Nikons and Kodachrome. There's Fay Godwin and Jane Bown - both women made a relevant mark. There's all the Magnum stuff. For regional human documentary, affectionate yet incisive - James Ravilious ('An English Eye'). 'Street Photography Now' (Thames & Hudson - easy to get hold of) is more urban and in-your-face without going overboard. 'Photographs 1955-2010' by John Blakemore is a very personal and satisfying retrospective.

For discussions (or monologues) about cultural aspects of photography: 'Aperture Anthology - the Minor White Years'; 'Photography Reader' edited by Liz Wells. As a primer, 'Approaching Photography' by Paul Hill.

There's tons out there (and a lot of dross so you have to be alert). All the above is stuff that's good to have in print on a shelf - a resource for life. As for books about technique - well at least for any basics it's probably more efficient to use the internet.
 
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The best book however was a little pocket guide to the history of photography I picked up at the Cecil Beaton exhibition at the IWM. Read it, gave it to a mate and can't remember the title.


Has anyone read "Photography: A Cultural History" or "On Photography"? Both look interesting but have polarised reviews.
 
st599 said:
Has anyone read "Photography: A Cultural History"
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It's a biggish and heavy book unsuitable for reading in bed. It tries to cover a lot of ground but suffers despite its size from being a bit brief about any given aspect of its content. It's a decent overview, if you want one, and may spur you on to other more focussed works.

I think you can get "On Photography" as a cheap paperback so it's not painful in terms of expenditure to give it a shot. It might suit you or it might not. Nobody but you can say. Too woffly for me. Both books are American, so come from a world where you get up in the morning and after a quick breakfast get out there to sell yourself - I mean talk, talk, talk, and sell the talk.

Look at some of the books in my last post ...
 
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st599 said:
Has anyone read "Photography: A Cultural History" or "On Photography"? Both look interesting but have polarised reviews.
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Yup - both on my reading list of my course. Both interesting books and ones you return to as various bits have more relevance

Droj - Street photography now - a great recommendation - I have this also.
 
Check UNDERSTANDING EXPOSURE, I found this book very intersting with a lot of good examples and very easy to undestand.
 
Keeping an eye out has been successful. Just picked up an original hard copy of Robert Franks The Americans for £15 :)
 
Lee Friedlander's books are great. Some of his work harks back to the days of Eugene Atget.
 
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