On Books

I am currently reading Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book.  When I first got this book I flipped through and read some of the pages,  but hadn't yet read it from cover to cover.

I really wish I had!

So,  Kelby writes in this,  I'm-your-buddy-and-we're-just-hanging-out-chatting-about-photography-the-way-some-people-chat-about-football way.  I like the straight forwardness,  but the banter gets a little tiresome.

That said,  it is really nice to read about it in a non-technical manner that is easy to understand.  He weaves in pretty easy to understand photoshop tips, too.  Even for a photoshop bonehead like me.

The information he's parsing out isn't even new information.  I've read/heard/figured out a lot of it already.  But it's still really useful to me to have it laid out the way Kelby does.  Here's an example: shoot landscapes only at dawn or dusk, really think about composition (include 3 segments-  foreground, middle, and background), and stop down for maximum depth of field (which really made me want to play with wide shots with low dof).  And if you mess with these guidelines it's likely you'll have some flat photos.  (see these for examples of what not to do :).

So,  I'm about a 3rd of the way through this book and it's concisely reminding me of general rules of photography.

I'm liking it.