Customer Reviews

Innovative Techniques for Wedding Photography

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

 

 

Overall this is very good book for the artistic/creative type of photographer who wants to learn more about wedding photography that is more creative, photojournalistic or artistic than the traditional posed method that is portrayed in other books (in fact, other than the differing style, this book is VERY similar to Steve Sint's or George Schuab's wedding photography books).

David Arndt does a pretty good job of explaining different approaches to weddings. If you want to learn a more creative, non-traditional approach to wedding photography, this is a great book to get you started.

The cover of this book should be a dead giveaway to the fact the pictures inside aren't very good and the advice is mediocre, at best. Why did they select a picture where the groom's face has a blotch on it from the rice or whatever is being thrown? The book is short on meaty advice, it is definitely for beginners. There's not a whole lot of creative images to draw ideas from. Photographers looking to get instruction on lighting, posing and other techniques for making people look good won't find it here. I don't care how "creative" you are with your equipment, film, filters and other gimmicks, the bottom line in wedding photography is you got to make people look good or they aren't going to pay for your work. This book consistently shows how to make people look bad, grotesque, stupid ... in the name of "creativity." It also suffers from the fact the color images were converted to black-and-white and poorly converted. The highlights are blown out and many are contrasty. I also was surprised at how many of the pictures were just plain out of focus or blurry. I would have thrown away many of the shots in this book. The text is set in a big font to make it look like your are getting lots of information, when you're really getting very basic stuff.
There are better books out there on wedding photography, but in my opinion the best way to learn it is with a video series. If you are serious about learning wedding photography, check out the David Ziser video series. They are meaty and will give you the tools you need to produce portraits that LOOK GOOD. I am disappointed that Amazon would recommend this book ... it's one of the worst I've seen on the subject. It's also outdated. Digital is taking over wedding photography, and it talks about digital as if it is still in the distant future.

As a wedding coordinator, I love to work with photographers that use creative verses traditional photography. Anyone can do the same 'set' shot. This book explores the endless possiblities of depth when a photographer allows his creative side to flow. Even without the narrative explanation given by Arndt, the pictures tell the story...and that should be the focus of all wedding photography.

I wish I had know how horrible this book was before I bought it! A major waste of money! Out of all the examples of "good" photography there was maybe one actually "good" photograph in the whole book. The information is just plane NOT informative. Spend your money on The Best of Wedding Photography: Techniques and Images from the Pros by Bill Hurter

This book provides a lot of good information for any wedding photographer. I especially liked the authors examples of exotic lenses and films.

There are many very fine photographs throughout this book. The contributers mainly excell in the area of wedding photojournalism. Clever camera angles and shooting techniques abound. The section on capturing the "details" of the wedding was very well done. Good book!