Customer Reviews

How to Photograph Your Family

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book and Kelsh's How to Photograph Your Baby have changed my life. My pictures have gone from snap shots to compelling photos that show great emotion. His suggestions are so simple, but make such a drastic difference. Everyone needs this book!!! You will be able to preserve your memories so much better. Everyone that sees my photos are amazed that I have no formal training and I have even had parents pay me to photograph their children. The book is NOT hard to follow and you need no formal knowledge of cameras. This is a must have! Everyone wins!

This book has a few simple concepts that are sure to revolutionize the way you take pictures (as well as the way you look at people). What could be simpler than the tips found in this book? We can all get closer, turn off the flash, and take a lot of pictures (a few rolls at a time). And yet, with just these basic tips, Nick Kelsh assures us that we will begin to take photos that will be treasured as instant classics.

Kelsh's tone is encouraging, conversational, and assuring. He is part-professional, part-everyphotographer. He is equally comfortable with portrait photography and snapshots. He avoids technical jargon and sticks with phrases we all like to imagine in connection with our own photos: "the envy of all your friends," "compliments on your photos," "people will ask you to photograph their children," and so on.

The book is a quick read, and has stunning photos by professionals and amateurs alike. You'll love your first reading of it, and I bet it will become a favorite over time. I'm tempted to buy several copies to give to friends. So don't wait -- get it, read it, and start taking pictures of your loved ones!

This book has some wonderful ideas. However, it is pricey for the amount of information you receive. More detail would have been very useful. I bought 2 of his books - families and babies. One would have done.

This book is an easy, entertaining read which offers a lot of no-nonsense, and very helpful tips for taking photographs. There are also lots of beautiful and very inspirational photos in the book. I would highly recommend it!

I really like this book. After I bought it, I became a first-time father (of twin girls). I take lots of pictures with a good digital camera. This book's lessons are very useful.

What I value about this book is its practical, insightful suggestions (and examples) for what kinds of activities one ought to be shooting (e.g., shoot candids, not just posed shots), and how photos ought to be composed (e.g., shoot tight-in on the subject, not overly wide shots). The book has been very helpful for me.

A must have if you really take photography serious.
I have been taken images for quite some time... and many times I was wondering: "Why isn't on the photo what I intended?".

Nick will give you no non-sense, honest answers to your questions, by showing and explaining the do's and don'ts... the technical layout of physically providing fold-out pages supports the idea of a tutorial, without having to page forwards and back through the book "to get the hang of it".

Nick states in his introduction: People seem to think that auto-everything means auto-everything. Many people do believe that all the bells and whistles make good shots, it doesn't, it will only capture (with all the bells and whistles) the subject you composed and pointed it to.

Nick also states: "Images that capture and convey your feelings come from the heart and the emotions - not high-quality optics and fine-grained film." Yes, it is that truth I like in particular. Take of the blinkers. This books shows you how.

It also claims that even watching a move will change forever, after you've read this book. Depending on your photographic state, this will happen.

I will give four stars for a really good book, and five stars for a book I will read over and over again. I have read it five times already. Still getting reminded of what can be done better... of what I have overlooked.

You do not have to be a family photo (wo)man. We all tend to take family photos for all occasions. These photos will be your most precious things. Nick stated this in his book, and he is right, as I could learn from the TV interviews from the recent victims of the devastating bush fires (in New south Wales, Australia, which claimed 150 homes). I saw ten interviews. Six interviewees expressed their grief over lost photos or of being able to having saved only the photos.

Sorry for the excursion... my point is, this book is brilliant. No techno babble, easy to understand and follow, no non-sense, and honest (which I appreciate the most).

Regards,
Max

I've taken pictures as an amature for over 30 years, but my people-pictures have never been successful--all the family photographs on our shelves were taken by others. In the first chapter, the author explained what I was doing wrong in simple, non-technical terms. Sounded good, so I took my digital camera, sought out my youngest child and shot several pictures. My wife and son were so delighted with the result they decided have an 8-1/2 x 11 print of one shot framed on his wall!

The skill-level required to use the book is probably "you can read" The ONLY technical term the author uses in the book is in the sentence in the introduction in which he says he won't use any.

The book is relatively short: I probably took about two hours total to read it, and I'm a fairly slow reader. There are, however, a large number of photos brilliantly illustrating the author's ideas, and the tips are so good that the book was well-worth the price. After a few months I will probably have reached the limits of the data in the book and will want to read something more in-depth, but I never would have gotten there without this great jump-start.

Not one of the most profound books I've ever read, but for darn sure one of the most effective.

I love this book. I've been taking pictures for 20 years and I can say this has improved my skills tremendously. The best photo book I have ever read!

This is the second Nick Kelsh book I have read -- the first being: "How to Photograph your Life" which I also gave a 5 star rating.

This book is bound in the same fun spiral bound hardcover.

Nick Kelsh devotes only a page to technique in order to achieve beautiful pictures. I suggests 3 basic rules:

1. get in close to your subject
2. shoot lots of frames
3. turn off the flash

His example photos are stunning. And to be honest in order to achieve similar results simply following the 3 basic rules is clearly not enough. Knowledge in choosing the appropriate film type and lens as well as carefully setting the suitable aperature is a clearly an important part in making his many of his pictures so breathtaking. Nick Kelsh does not cover the specific nitty gritty of technique since it is well documented in numerous photography books so readily available.

He instead focuses on training yourself to recognize photographic moments when with friends and families that are often overlooked by the amateur or layperson photographer

There is absolutely NO discussions about equipment -- so for all you hardwaare junkies your outta luck here. Instead he approaches the teaching of photography through inspiration, sentimentality, nostalgia and story telling.

There are some overlaps in material between his other book (How to photograph your Life).

Good book. But the content is sort of light. National Geographic Photography Field Guide - Secrets to making great picture would get you more information and better improve your skill for a similar price.