18th Sep 2009
More Photography book reading
It’s of course been lots of working the past couple days, didn’t really do anything special other than playing on the piano practicing some songs, and went to Chapters (again) to read a few more books. Some of the books I read during last week:
Understanding Close-up Photography: Creative Close Encounters with or without a Macro Lens - Bryan Peterson
Full colour book with lots and lots of great tips on doing close-up photography from the author’s own experience. I was surprised to learn that “macro photography” is actually very different from “close-up photography”, and people (like me) tend to mix these terms up - macro photography refers to photographs that are at least 1:1 in magnification, so anything less magnified than that is considered to be close-up, not macro. The book talks about all kinds of tools and setups that you can use for close-up photography, namely extension tubes, macro lens, telephoto lens with macro function, reverse adapter for prime lens, macro ring-flashes..etc. Also talks about some essential skills for photography insects, and various other objects. Very informative and well illustrated book that I think is a must-read for anyone that is interested in close-up/macro photography. I want to get a reverse adapter for my Zuiko 50mm ASAP!
Rick Sammon’s Digital Photography Secrets
This is a very interesting book, that is just not like any other books. Loaded with 100’s of tricks and tips on how to shoot certain type of photographs, such as lighting, location, time, framing, creative ideas, action shots…you name it. A lot of these ideas were new to me so it really made me think. Can’t really name every single trick in the book as there were so many of them but I’m sure when time comes, I will be able to recall some of them. This is actually a good point - it’s always impossible to memorize everything in a book, but just by reading them and knowing some of the ideas (if not all) is still extremely beneficial to the mind.
A Bloom A Day - Ron van Dongen
Herbarium Amoris: Floral Romance
These two books are both full-color illustrations of the close-up/macro shots of many many different types of flowers and plants. Very very nice photographs, some of them were speechlessly stunning. I noticed a lot of the shots were shot with a solid background color. Black was used to make the flower stand out and also creates a sense of mystical beauty. Other colors were used to complement flowers with other different colors. In one of the books the author mentioned that he liked to use old t-shirts with solid colors as the background, quite interesting. It’s much easier said than done though, provided that you need a way of placing the background behind the object (maybe some sort of tripod + clips? Or an extra pair of hands), and that you need to make use of the flash as lighting will probably but diminished due to light being blocked by whatever that is used as the background. I think it’s quite difficult, maybe I’ll try it at a later day, but now I guess I’ll stick with shooting with available light, with good DOF to create an out-of-focus background.
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