Customer Reviews

Lights, Camera... Nude!: A Guide to Lighting the Female Nude for Photography

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

 

 

The lighting diagrams in this book offer a wealth of information on how to set up your lights, background, model, and even position your camera. Most books of this nature are a collection of great photos, with a few anecdotes about their creation, and little more to give you a clue as how to reproduce the results.

The author mentions that some adjustment will be necessary, because no studio situation is exactly the same, including equipment. Speaking of equipment, the author tells you what kind of equipment to get and divides it up into various kits based on cost. And another nice thing about these photos is that they were created without the aid of mega-expensive, could-have-bought-a-car-for-that-price photo equipment. So we might actually be able to make photos like these on our own.

If the book stopped there, it would be worth reading. But it provides much more; there are plenty of words in this picture book, but not too many. It starts by telling you about lighting the nude in general -- which is a little academic but I suppose a necessary evil required to benefit fully from the rest of the book. And in addition to the lighting diagrams there are these little photos with circles that show you where each light is aimed, these tie the lighting diagrams back to the sample photos.

The book is also nicely organized into sections on indoor, outdoor, location, and so on. Each lighting setup has a difficulty level and corresponds to a set of equipment.

There are little tips and tricks throughout the book, like putting up black cloth on the wall behind the camera to avoid washing out the model. I wouldn't have thought of doing that.

There is also a couple of pages of problems and solutions at the end of the book. There are some very nice photos using water, and the models are very attractive.

This book is a great expansion on the lighting section in the author's other book True Confessions of Nude Photography: A step-by-step guide to recruiting beautiful models, lighting, photographing nudes, post-processing images, and maybe even getting paid to do it. There are a couple of repeat photos, but most of the material seems to be new or revised and it is 100% on lighting.

Nichols has hit another home run here. Much like in his previous book, "True Confessions of Nude Photography", he presents what might be seen as a difficult subject and shows how simple things can be. The subject matter of this new book is lighting techniques for shooting nudes. He goes over general concepts at first, but then dives into explaining what the various lighting devices are and even provides what different lighting kits and equipment configurations can do for you. Studio and location settings are explained in a very-easy-to-understand manner. It's refreshing in that Nichols does not try to overwhelm the reader with too much information or impress them with his wealth of knowledge and experience. He just lays it out simply and concisely.

All the but the most advanced professionals will benefit from reading this book, and the best part is that it won't take that long before you're lighting your models like a pro.

Sure, the book tells you about different lighting scenarios, but the pictures have low quality. I hoped for more professional artistic pictures, not snapshots and explanation on where the light is coming from. To basic to fully enjoy.