Beyond Portraiture: Creative People Photography
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Beyond Portraiture: Creative People Photography Details
About the Author Bryan Peterson is a well-known photographer, writer, and teacher. In addition to his many books for Amphoto, he writes a column that appears in Popular Photography and contributes to prominent magazines. His workshops and online photo course at PPSOP.com are invariably sold out. He divides his time between Seattle, WA and Lyon, France, and New York City. Read more
Reviews
Many years ago I was a budding photographer with no formal training, never really interested in photographing people. Yet people were always getting in the way of most of my shots. Many years later, I discovered that people can add interest to my images by adding scale, a sense of place, or adding to the image's story. Today I enjoy sports photography and I look for ways to include people when composing an image. As a serious hobby photographer with no formal training, this book helped me get more creative when photographing people.Beyond Portraiture is a straight forward book explaining the many aspects of creative people photography. The book is broken down into five main sections. UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE explains a bit of psychology, approaching people, and how to get people to agree to be photographed. WORKING WITH PEOPLE discusses the types of people you should "cast" for your intended images, and how to maintain a comfortable and respectful relationship of varying types of people you may want to photograph. LIGHT details differing types of light and how they affect your images. COMPOSING POWERFUL PORTRAITS offers basic composition rules, backgrounds, movement, camera settings and lens options. PHOTO-EDITING TECHNIQUES is a series of lessons in Photoshop to help perfect your images.It is assumed the reader already has a solid grasp on exposure. If this is not the case, read Brian Peterson's Understanding Exposure prior to reading this book. There are short sections discussing shutter speed and aperture, but they are not in-depth enough to form the solid foundation of exposure settings every serious photographer should have. Brian refers to these settings, as he should, in most of the topics.If you shoot in fully automatic mode, you will get something out of this book, but may lack the ability to duplicate the results except by luck. Chances are a camera in fully automatic mode will determine a correct exposure; however the camera can be fooled into setting an incorrect exposure. Plus there is more than one "correct exposure" setting for a scene, but which setting creatively results in the image you want?While the technical details that I have read in this book are commonly known among serious hobbyist, it is Brian Peterson's perspective and experiences that make this book worth reading. His simple writing style is conducive to learning and interesting, opening my eyes to even more possibilities. Even though I look for ways to include people in my pictures, this book will take me to the next level.If you have mastered the subject, this book is not for you. However, if you are a beginner with an aversion to photographing people, or are not satisfied with your portraits and candid shots get this easy to understand book. If you have a general understanding but have room for improvement, this book will help fill in the missing pieces.PROSStraight forward easy to understand bookFull of valuable informationIncludes mention of film and digital cameras where applicable.Full of inspiring imagesCONSWith the discussion of the importance of model releases, a template should have been included.
