Customer Reviews

Studio Portrait Photography in Black & White: Techniques and Images

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

 

 

As a 30-year veteran art director for print and web, I understand how "technical" traditional studio portraiture can become. Renowned photographer, David Derex, has give us "doable" understandable examples of lighting and "moment" capturing. Derex's subjects fill parts of his camera frame in ways which trained designers admire; the forms enhance the communication by their basic shapes. "Expressive" individuals reveal themselves "emotionally" during the exposure. Spontaneity, combined with "expert lighting" and experienced encouragement of the photographer, create images which will outlive us all. This book's wording is pithy, direct and clear in message. I felt present in the studio during the shoot at times. If you are looking for an excellent book on studio portraiture, which shows lighting configurations and tells the "technical tricks" which made the shot "work," then this is the book for you.

I have never reviewed a book before but this one is so poor that I thought I should warn people. I bought this book to learn a little bit of black and white portrait lighting techniques and maybe some darkroom or other creative techniques however the images are awful. There are very few pictures in this book that are even in focus. I can tolerate soft focus but these are just bad. There was one image in the book that was o.k. and the photographer even said it was not planned, he just tripped the shutter as the subjects were playing around. The shots that he staged and set up are just terrible. I will stick with getting information and inspiration from "Hollywood Portraits: Classic Shots and How to Take Them" by Roger Hicks and Christopher Nisperos and also "Fine Art Children's Photography: Techniques and Images in Black & White" by Doris Carol Doyle. They both had better information and much better images.

This is a book written for photographers who already have a good knowledge of studio lighting. There is not much instructional material here, but the work is very nice. There also is a good discussion of printing an darkroom techniques by a master printer.

This book does not really teach you anything, and the examples are bad. The pictures that have explanation are terrible, so why woyuld i want to take them? Do yourself a favor, buy another book. The best pictures are just presented, with no technical explanation. I am sure mr. derex is a good photographer, except this is not a good book.

This is an amazing book! David Derex is an amazing photographer!