Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great idea book., December 1, 2006
I have several books on glamour and erotic photography and I find this book by John Blair to be one of the most useful. The photos are mostly taken with equipment available to the average amateur, shot in locations available to most, and the models look like real women. As much as I enjoy "Garage Glamour" there isn't much garage to it -- without thousands of dollars in lighting and equipment and a fabulous and luxurious home to shoot in and Playmates to pose for you, you're just not going to get the kind of results R. Gomez does. On the other hand, following Blair's step by step approach, most people should expect similar results to his, particularly if they use bounce flash shot through a reflector dome such as Gary Fong's Lightsphere. In fact the flash technique alone is worth the price of the book. This is a book I turn to again and again.
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48 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
In a Minefield, July 9, 2006
I have no experience taking sensual pictures of women. Indeed, it was the lack of experience that led me to this book. And I come away from it with mixed feelings.
One of the most important sections of this book lays out the steps necessary to take what the author calls "boudoir" photographs, which he defines as "beautiful, sensual and sexy images of regular women". These steps include everything from selecting equipment, to posing, to retouching images. The longest section, called "lessons", then goes over certain subjects like posing, lighting and props with further details and plenty of photographs. There are some short sections such as advanced topics and resources that provide some checklists, but not much depth.
The book is full of ideas that I would never have thought up myself, like how to make a tube dress from 2/3 of a yard of stretch Lycra that will cling tightly to your model, or the advantages of purchasing an old-fashioned tub and putting it in the woods to use as a prop. Every one of the ideas is profusely illustrated.
And there's part of the rub. While some pictures offer an attractive woman in a sensual pose, just as many seem to show how to make the same attractive woman less attractive. Moreover, they often become quite repetitious. How many pictures of Tanya in a fireman's rescue suit do you need to make a point?
Now I have to display my prejudices. I feel that it's possible to make a boudoir photograph that's tasteful. Yet many of the author's pictures seemed tawdry to me. I often found the pictures of women who exposed less of their bodies more attractive than those who exposed more.
I also noticed that there was little discussion of the technical aspects of photography, other than the pros and cons of different focal length lenses. The digital aspects of the photography appeared to have been tacked on so that the book could say it was about digital photography but the tack-on will be of little use to serious digital photographers.
There is a portion of the book that purports to tell you how to see a woman, but other than to tell you that different women have attractive and unattractive body parts, there was little further discussion. I would have liked to learn, for example, how the author would photograph a woman whose thighs were too large to meet the current standards of female attractiveness.
I can't ignore the question of whether this book objectifies women, but suspect that if you pick up this book, you've gotten past that issue. I believe that there's nothing wrong with trying to capture the sensual elements of another human being, male or female, in a photograph. I also believe it has very little to do with capturing cleavage.
I have no doubt that I may use some of the many tips in this book. It's too bad the book couldn't have done a better job of telling us how to view subjects and capture more of what makes them attractive on film.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I think there is a lot here for everyone, July 29, 2006
I've been photographing women for over two years now and have read a number of books on the subject. Many of them are very technical right down to the point of showing little diagrams showing exactly where to place the camera in relation to the flash and reflector stands. That's helpful in it's own way, but what if you don't have a sunsail or some other piece of equipment the photographer is using?
I feel this book is helpful because it offers guidelines towards taking the pictures a photographer has in his or her mind as opposed to how to recreate someone else's photos in some other book.
There are also tips in the book I would never have thought of, which just goes to show that it's never too late to learn something new.
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