Customer Reviews

Digital Fashion Photography

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

From the publishers of "When Pancakes Go Bad" (What sounds like a B-grade Horror movie, is a really cool Photoshop book) comes this lushly produced book on fashion phototherapy that's more coffee table book that how-to guide and that's a good thing. Oh sure, it's full of step-by-step tips on creating fashion photographs including planning, lighting, and postproduction, but it's the images themselves that will inspire you to use these techniques to create your own fashion photographs. While the illustrations may all be from the fashion genre there's no cookie cuter approach. All of the images from have their own unique style, which also makes the book a valuable resource. A unbeatable combination of minimalist text with BIG spectacular fashion imagery make "Digital Fashion Photography" a must have book.

This book starts off with a chapter called 'From Film to Digital.' It used to be that we all used view cameras. Then we put in Polariod film and shot until we got what we thought we wanted. Except that Polariod just didn't have the contrast, the lustre that real film had. Then we would switch to real film. And because we could never be sure we would shoot at the exposure we thought was right then under expose a couple, then over expose a couple in hopes of getting it right. (Anybody want to buy a view camera?)

With digital, the LCD readout on the back or through the viewfinder is as perfect as it's going to get. You shoot a lot of pictures, but you vary the placement, the lights, you move things a bit. You can look for yourself or show your client the picture on a display immediately. You can save a few hundred shots on a CD-ROM and keep them forever. And the new DVD's are even better.

Of course there's a chapter on selecting a camera. This book concentrates on the professional grade cameras, not the consumer point and shoot models. These SLR camers have more pixels, more features, etc. Next year the current models will all be obsolete, the features of the SLR will be down in the point and shoot and the SLR's will have even more.

After these fundamental chapters, the next several chapters of the book are on shooting pictures of girls. How to select the model, how to position her, lighting, what props to use, a complete lesson on shooting for fashion.

>Then it's to digital retouching to get the most out of an image. And finally some tips from a pro on how to make money in this business.

Fashion photography is a nice little niche of the photographic market. There are people even in small cities making a living taking fashion pictures for advertising. Why. Look at the ads in the paper, in catalogs, on billboards.

Somebody had to take those pictures.

[...]

On a positive note, this book is full of useful tips that many photographers rarely want or think to share, from how to really replicate natural light in the studio to what goes through their minds when they make selections between images after shooting. I own dozens of photographic books that claim to show you how to set up shots but generally fail to deliver anything except "lighting diagrams" with no mention of what settings on the flashes and on the camera are needed to actually create the image - Digital Fashion Photography does all this and more. There are images from Vogue and cute vignettes of celebrities like Matt LeBlanc from the hit TV series Friends.

For those looking for a photoshop tome, this is not the book for you. There are over half a dozen books focused on post-production, such as the hit masking book from Kartin Eismann. Digital Fashion Photography is about shooting the images, getting clients and working with models, all in a fashion context.

And by the way, cold calling does work. I have been a professional fashion photographer for over a decade now and cold calling is how I started out - how else would you get to know designers and clients if they don't even know you exist and you are too green for the photo agents to pick you up.

Overall a great read backed with great photography.

I had great expectations to this book. Maybe they were too high. It's a nice book with lots of info, but the writer could have gone a lot further in filling out the blanks. I feel he's just scratching the surface most of the time. The info and pictures are good, but it's just like he's teasing the reader, because he stops right at the point where you only want more - and haven't got much. A lot of very important information is only just mentioned without any further explanation or diagrams or whatever. I read this from cover to cover, and every second of it I told myself that "this is the point where he really digs in"... But alas, no.....

This is a goregeous book. There are pages and pages of full page pics of scantilly or seductively clad models.

On the other hand the rest of the "technical" info could have fit on about 20 pages -- the rest are pics showing off the author's portfolio and to seduce the --probably-- most male reader.

The authors does show some of his camera toys, but says little about setting things up or exposure info etc.

it was a good book but I would have liked more it if they told you how to photograph men as well women and not just women.

Chris Tarantino's retouching of fashion photos have appeared in major magazines worldwide, and his co-author Ken Tan has been a fashion and glamour photographer for over 10 years, so the two together present a magical blend of practical experience and varied fashion photography backgrounds lending to an excellent step of step-by-step fashion shot techniques from pre-photo set-up to post-production. Lest you think this just another general guide - there are many techniques unique to the objectives of the fashion industry - so much is covered here which is simply unavailable in less focused photography titles. Digital Fashion Photography is a 'must' for any aspiring neo-pro fashion photographer.

This book is not worth the paper printed on. It did not feature diagrams to lighting setups. was very broad and too simplistic.Beautiful photographs, but no analyzation or break down on how the photos were done. Lacking in description of technique and know how. If you want to look at beautiful photographs and have a another coffee table book of photographs...buy this. other wise don't throw good hard earned money away.

Attempting to be all things rarely works and this book is the embodiment of that principle.

Digital Fashion Photography utterly fails as a book on photography or a book on photoshop or as a book on fashion. Yes it touches an all these subjects yet gives very, very little in-depth knowledge.

I could forgive it for all the above if it at least had some inspiring fashion photography in it. Alas, most of the photographs are more glamor and beauty. Very little fashion.
To add insult to injury, several of the models are obviously amateurs.

If your are interested in photography, color management, photoshop or lighting there are many other; better choices. If you are interested in the business of fashion photography then buy 'Fashion Photography: A Complete Guide to the Tools and Techniques of the Trade' by Bruce Smith. A much superior work from a REAL fashion photographer.
Fashion Photography: A Complete Guide to the Tools and Techniques of the Trade

If you're looking for a book about digital fashion photography this is NOT the book. If you're looking for a book about the fashion photography business this IS the book. I was so disappointed when I received this. The book is filled with beautiful fashion shots but not a single word about how any of these photographs were achieved. If you want to learn to be a fashion photographer I'd suggest Jennifer Bidner & Eric Bean's "The Lighting Cookbook for Fashion and Beauty Photography," Cathy Joseph's " Outdoor Lighting: Fashion & Glamour," or Roger Hicks & Frances Shultz's "Photographing People: Portraits, Fashion, Glamour."