Customer Reviews

Talking Photography: Viewpoints on the Art, Craft and Business

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

 

 

Frank Van Riper writes a weekly column about photography for the Washington Post. This book collects Van Riper's best columns. The book is well organized with sections on the "State of the Art," "On Becoming a Photographer," "Shooting People" and "Technical Tips." There are also articles about equipment and famous photographers. Some of the articles are illustrated with black and white photos. Most of all, the reader gets the benefit of Van Riper's years of experience and thoughtful writing. The book is well indexed, which I find very useful. The index allows the reader to locate any topic quickly. I highly recommend this book to readers with a passion for photography. The book will inspire you.

To produce a quarter to half page article each week on a topic such as photography, intended to appeal to a large and varied audience, requires a pretty good understanding of the medium as well as an understanding of the audience. After nearly ten years of writing for the Washington Post, that's over five hundred articles, on everything from photography etiquette to the latest and greatest in film and equipment, including all the techniques and sundries in between, Frank Van Riper has won the following of nearly every amateur and professional photographer in the Washington, DC area and now with Camera Works online, his articles are available anywhere there is a computer. Talking Photography, Viewpoints on the Art, Craft and Business, is a selection of Frank's best articles, one hundred in all. Suffice to say, there's something for everyone in Talking Photography.

Quite an interesting account of his encounters and experiences with the different facets of a professional photographer. If you have a problem or a scenario as a photographer, it's probably in there.
The book is NOT a how-to book so finding things may be difficult if you are already uptight and furious about a problem which you're having. It's more of a book for you to read it now and possibly return to refer to it when you need to.

Viewpoints on the art, craft and business of photography presents over a hundred essays, interviews, and personal memories featured in the author's Washington Post . Accompanied by black and white photos, Talking Photography provides a variety of topics on everything from computer art to shooting particular scenes and challenging circumstances.

...it's nothing what the editorial review would like you to think. I've read many of Frank's articles on Washington Post's Cameraworks and like many of his articles on there, this book is much ado about nothing. You're better off spending that money on a subscription to a photography magazine.