Ansel Adams wrote a series of three books that lay out the basics of composition, capture, development and printing in more detail than the London & Upton’s book. In order, they are The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. Although most of the language refers to film photography, I can’t think of a better means of seating one’s fund of knowledge in traditional photography technique. For anyone starting in digital imaging, the nuts and bolts of practice is based on traditional film and silver-emulsion paper techniques. Even if you only use the text to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary of photography, I recommend them. Remember that the people designing today’s equipment (and the photographers who make demands on them) were mostly film photographers before digital imaging came of age. The upgrades of new digital equipment and the features in our imaging software still hew to the knowledge base of the film crowd. For me, It’s time for a re-read of Adams’ books, as I’m eyeing a medium-format film rig that a friend-of-a-friend is letting go.

Another is a commonly used text in trade schools called Light – Science and Magic, by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua. It provides a fairly thorough and easy-to-read introduction of photographic lighting. The book is invaluable for the photographer that needs to understand the effect of lighting on their photography. They stress the importance of thinking of all your light sources, under your control or not, before you think of picking up the camera. They review classic portrait lighting, lighting of traditionally difficult materials like glass and metal, and difficult situations in a direct, no-frills way that could make the book an essential in your gear bag.

Introductions to digital photography are ubiquitous. I haven’t heard of one that provides a comprehensive introduction to imaging by digital photography. Most are a short introduction with a few notes on file management and a few image processing tricks. In reality, it’s rather difficult to cover the needs of all possible readers, from those with only snapshots to those looking to break into professional work. For anyone with a single-lens reflex camera processing digital images with artistic or professional work in mind, I have no suggestion for a general introductory book. But I do have recommendations for one recent book that addresses a terribly common problem, approximating normal skin tones in digital images.

I recommend Skin by Lee Varis. Although the subtitle promises a “complete guide to digitally lighting, photographing and retouching faces and bodies,” the book doesn’t quite live up to the promise. The book is light on addressing general issues as a “complete guide,” and after a while it becomes a series of not-so-subtle post-processing tricks to cover up one problem or another. What it does have, however, is a few general principles from a very experienced film and digital photographer about 1) setting a base compensation for your camera to color correct images before you start detailed processing and 2) getting skin tone correct in post-processing. The list of tricks in the middle of the book includes a few fancy tricks, such as performing non-local blemish control for portraits without blurring the image, and some others that I’d bet most digital photographers haven’t seen. Those features keep it on my shelf for easy reference.

I welcome your feedback, or any recommendations you have for photography reading. Happy shooting!

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