Customer Reviews

Digital Portrait Photography and Lighting: Take Memorable Shots Every Time

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the magic world of photographers' dreams, a portrait reveals the inner person. After years of pursuing this dream, I'm happy with a good likeness. This book aims at the latter, although it acknowledges the former as a goal. It also makes it clear that good portrait photography is about lighting. Unfortunately, the book may be a little difficult to use easily.

The book is organized into four parts. After a brief introduction, the first part tells you about the equipment that you need for portrait photography, including cameras, lenses and lights. Experienced photographers will find it a bit elementary but its purpose is to give every reader an equal understanding of the tools. A meaty chapter deals with the standard lighting configuration for portraits, which is the basic model that one then modifies for most portraits.

The second part deals with composition and posing and the idea of separating the two provides a useful approach for portrait photography. The third part deals with photographing under different lighting conditions, including outdoors, existing indoor light and studio lighting. The final part deals with post-production techniques.

While I think the book covers almost everything that one needs to know to take good portraits, its structure is to provide many different tips that often seem unrelated, rather than a comprehensive framework for approaching portrait photography. While this may be due to the nature of the task, I have found other books that were not nearly as comprehensive to be more clearly organized. For example, an old favorite of mine, "Professional Secrets of Natural Light Portrait Photography" by Douglas Allen Box provided a clear approach to its more limited subject than this book.

The post production section of the book is less effective than the first three parts. In the first three parts, for example, the authors assumed the readers knew the fundamentals of exposure and provided tips on the specific problems of portrait exposure. This final part seemed mostly to deal in generalities. Portrait photography seems an ideal place for some of Photoshop's tools, like the techniques for reducing the signs of age. But this book did not contain any specifics about such techniques. The Photoshop user interested in those kinds of details will have to find the information elsewhere, like Scott Kelby's smart alecky, but useful books.

There was also a curious appendix on going into business that was much too brief to do anything but suggest that there are a lot of considerations involved in making a living from portrait photography.

I found the photographs in the book quite interesting and a possible source of inspiration. The authors are not afraid to cut off parts of the face, or shoot from unusual angles. These approaches may not always please a CEO looking for a standard shot, but they do create interesting art.

Despite its shortcomings, this book did provide me with more information than any single portrait photography book I've read.

After reading the description on the back cover of what I would find in the book... and then reading the book.. I was left thinking huh???? Did I miss something???

Although the book does have a few good tips, it does not deliver on what the description says it will. Many items were just glazed over. The biggest flaw was that the image samples did not match the text around them.

Although the book was fully of some cool looking images... many were taken with a ring light (you can tell this by the donut shaped catch light in the models eye). I love the look of ringflash images, but found this very disturbing and out of place in many sections. For example: when reading about main, fill & key lights, lighting ratios, backlighting, side lighting, multiple light setups, etc... then to be shown samples where none of these techniques were used. The images shown were done with a ring light. This can only lead the reader to beleive that they too can get these cool looking images with what is described in the text... and that is misleading, because they can not.

The lighting diagrams were nice, but it would have been a good thing to include actual images taken with these setups, so that the read could understand what the image would look like when using these setups.

I think the Basic Image Editing chapter was very well written with wonderful examples of what was written about. I wish the rest of the book would have been done as well as this chapter.

I loved all the cool images.. it was very refreshing to see hip new shots. Maybe they should have been in a different book though.. maybe one on taking cool images with alternative lighting.. like the ring flash.

I first purchased this book to show support for another Flickr member. I figured it would be a nice book about portrait photography with some nice photographs. I was pleasantly surprised when my book arrived and I realized it was a very comprehensive book on the subject of portrait photography!

I have to tell you...I think this is the best book on portrait photography and lighting that I've read to date. I have quite a few books on the subject, and I wish this one had been released sooner. Would have saved me a few bucks. :D

The book is well written and easy to understand. It has great lighting setup diagrams, and the best part is the collection of wonderful photo examples. Every other photography book out there seems to have the most out-dated photos! Most of them look like they were taken in the 80s, but these are current and just fantastic.

The book also gives SPECIFIC examples for headshots, glamour shots, and other portrait scenarios which is unbelievably helpful. It will probably become my new photography bible. LOL

Photography is a technical art form, and it's easy to get bogged down in things like apertures, shutter speeds, and lighting ratios. So many other books out there seem to "dumb down" the technical side of photography, much to my dismay, but this book is a good balance between the two. I highly recommend it to anyone out there who's interested in portrait photography.

Many thanks to Catherine and everyone else who helped out with the book! It's wonderful. :)

I've read eight different books on portrait photography and this is by far the best one. I highly recommend it for anyone from the beginner who just wants better snapshots of their kids or family to the serious amateur who wants to learn how to take pro-looking, posed portraits. The book also covers lots of useful stuff on lighting in addition to posing. What I like about this book is you can get useful and practical stuff out of it no matter how much time you have. If you spend 10 minutes paging through chapter 5 on posing, you will immediately improve your portrait composition. If you spend more time understanding different lighting options (natural and flash), you'll improve even more.

A very practical book and significantly better than all the other ones on this subject that I've read.

My photographs have improved over time to the point where I realized how poor my skills were at taking pictures of people. I looked for several books until I found this one. It seemed like it might be helpful. I was very pleased to find the book was exactly what I was looking for. It is written in a conversational style that concise but interesting. The book covers the special compositional skills required for good portraiture as well as practical guidelines to help overcome common posing challenges (such as irregular facial features). Studio lighting has always been a bit of a mystery to me. The chapter on lighting shows how to get started with a few basic studio setups and how various lighting elements interact with the subject.
The book also covers different types of portraiture, a brief overview of starting a portrait business, digital editing and even how to work with models. I would encourage anyone trying to improve their "people pictures" or who is interested in portraiture to read this book.

This is one of the most well written and comprehensive books on portraiture that I have read in a long time. Very though and engaging- this book covers a lot of ground but does in such a way that the reader never becomes bored. This is a book about portrait photography, and the 1st half of it really applies to both film and digital. The last part is more photoshop-centric but also awesome.

I found the book very dense with information - good information . However, I think this is best suited to people interested in persuing a professional career as a photographer or a really serious devotee of the subject. It is not a book you can pick up and find quick helpful tips; you have to really read and digest the info offered. I returned it for this reason though I feel the book was well written it just wasn't what I was looking for at this time.

There really isn't much difference between film and digital portrait photography, other than the digital camera's ability to immediately show you what your results look like. Even so, this book is an excellent introduction to portrait photography, with the digital photographer in mind.

Of course, good lighting goes hand-in-hand with formal and candid portrait photography, so you'd expect to find a complete look at lighting setups in this book. It really does the job in showing you how to set up lights. There's also an interesting look at the use of props and various backgrounds to provide a professional looking portrait. I don't usually care to find image editing tips in a book that claims to deal with photographic techniques, but the procedures listed in this book were good and relevant. All in all, a satisfying and useful guide.

This is the second Jamieson's book I bought. Her first book on photoblog is not that good. I tired her book again because of the favorable comments readers made here. Again, I am disappointed.

I take photographs for 3 years and I am a part time wedding photographer myself.

The part on lighting, INMO, is lack in information. Most of the pictures in the book is not shot by the author, so I think she didn't have enough photos to illustrate what she wants to say. The lighting is boring, and most of the photos are taken by ringlight, which is not even mentioned in the book (So why did she include them in the book to illustrate the text?) Ms. Katherine did mention that different lightings should be used on different faces. Pointed nose, high cheek should be treated differently. But how? She didn't use picture to show us. A good photograph book should use pictures to supplement the texts. For lighting, I recommend Christoper Grey's book, which gives us many examples.

The posing part is not much better. The writer shows her difficulty to find the suitable picture to put with the text. The pose is boring, with most of them head and shoulder portraits (Is that because her studio not big enough to take full body portrait?). The style of the pic repeats pages after pages with no creativity injected in them. She made many tips on posing but in most case, couldn't find a suitable picture to clearly shows the effect.

I could not comment on the post processing part because I throw the book away before i reach that section.

There are better book out there. Save your money on a better one.

I got this book to speed me along the way to being a better portrait photographer. One of the things that I was looking for was a thorough discussion of lighting. I felt that the lighting discussion in the book was shallow in that I finished the book without any idea of what sort of lighting equipment I should acquire. If you already have studio lights, and want more ideas on how to improve your work, then this book is for you. If you want to take better photos with existing light then this is a good book.