Review of nine books on digital photography.

Picture this. Your boss suggests that photographs would strengthen your technical communication project. You remember your new digital camera and start to say, "I could take pictures." But you're just a little unsure of yourself when it comes to the special demands of taking pictures for work.

Books on digital photography abound, but not all address areas important to technical communicators: You'll likely take your pictures indoors, under fluorescent or dim light in cluttered settings. You might wonder how to make your subject (product or person) look good. You might see a need for close-ups. You might be photographing in color, with final output in black and white. The right books for technical communication address such areas through broadly different approaches.

Table 1 provides a comparative overview of nine books on digital photography that technical communicators may find helpful.

SHOOT LIKE A PRO!: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

Julie Adair King takes a frontal approach in Shool like a pro! The chapter "Exploring product photography and other still-life adventures" gets right into the practicalities of the picture taking you're likely to be doing, with advice on creating a stage, choosing a backdrop, avoiding moire patterns (as when your subject is wearing a thin-striped shirt), and dealing with glass and reflections. "Taking memorable portraits" and "Capturing close-ups" discuss such goals as taking employee head shots, doing product photography, and adjusting for low light and fast action.

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A color center insert, "35 secrets the pros know," is filled with handy information such as why you should keep your ISO low and your megapixels high, the trouble with too much compression, and white balance miscues. The succinct and easy-to-read tips and information let you get back to work fast. Only about 20 per cent of the text covers refining photos and printing. The author's software of choice is PhotoShop Elements. The book is well indexed and contains references to information on such subjects as lighting, flash, portraits, still life, black and white, and more.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY BIBLE: DESKTOP EDITION

The strength of Dan Simon's book is the way it takes you through real-life situations. If your task is to document a procedure, for example, you'll want to pay attention to Chapter 13, "Telling a story with pictures." The 76-page section "Photography for professionals in other fields" especially hooked me. It consists of 76 pages for working professionals in fields other than photography who may be called on to take pictures. Although the mentoring here aims squarely at professionals in such fields as real estate and automobile sales, you can easily translate the advice to technical communication.

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Read this book for its ideas. Look for it to stimulate your thinking. The sections on lighting and people, however, are slim. There's no advice on close-ups or converting color to black and white. Image processing is for Photoshop.

HOW TO DO EVERYTHING WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

If you've been taking pictures for a while and want to bring your picture taking to a higher level, Dave Huss's How to do everything with digital photography should be a good choice. Call it a book with 20 chapters full of tips and tricks with a concluding section on how to take better photos. Advice on image manipulation is given for PhotoShop, PSP, and other software resources.

Except for black and white conversion (a software operation done after you take a color photo), Huss covers in detail all the bases of concern to technical communication work. One chapter is an in-depth tutorial on lighting that explains the types of metering, histograms, and exposure values. Another helps you decide when and how to use flash.

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Two chapters give helpful pointers for composition, while others do the same for photographing people and creating close-up photos. In fact, helpful describes the whole book.

TOTAL DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: THE SHOOT TO PRINT WORKFLOW HANDBOOK

If you've taken pictures with film all your life but have recently switched to digital, you might not feel the need for a book on photography basics. But you might like the way Serge Timacheff and David Karlins's Total digital photography focuses on the digital differences. Written by two professional photographers who specialize in photographing the sport of fencing, this is a good contribution to the double field of picture taking with a camera and picture refining with software.

The authors divide their text into three parts: "Setting up for digital photography workflow," "Following the digital photography workflow," and "Appendixes." The divisions in Part II are called stages rather than chapters. Technical communicators who have never worked on a photo shoot will learn from the stage "Preparing the digital photo shoot." Advice on studio shoots, composition, lighting, white-balance, ISO, and file formats comes in the stage "The digital photo shoot." The rest of the book is devoted to file transferring, reviewing, organizing, and other steps that take place after the photo shoot.

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THE PRACTICAL GUIDE TO DIGITAL IMAGING: MASTERING THE TERMS, TECHNOLOGIES, AND TECHNIQUES

Newcomers to digital photography who find themselves overwhelmed by the learning curve (and it can be steep) brought about by the terminology and the things to do should welcome The practical guide to digital imaging, by Michelle Perkins. It's an easy-to-follow and informative overview of what you need to know about your basic equipment (what all the specs are about), what you should remember when shooting, what software you will need after shooting, and an introduction to digital enhancement. There's even a chapter on scanning for those who haven't given up on their film cameras but want to work with digital output.

The above books are general in nature and cover essential topics in varying degrees of thoroughness. Here are some further choices for those wishing to explore specific areas.

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DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXPERT: LIGHT AND LIGHTING

Before investing in lights and other contraptions to set up your own photo studio, you might want to look at Digital photography expert: Light and lighting. Author Michael Freeman advises, "A standard digital camera simply does not need the precision and power of expensive studio lighting. This may be heresy to the purists, but is good news to photographers with smaller budgets. You can use almost any source of illumination, and the digital sensor, with the help of a good white-balance menu, will generally cope with it" (p. 121). This is not to say, however, that you can take pictures with your digital camera with no regard for lighting. In fact, anyone who takes pictures should have a grasp of the subjects Freeman covers in Chapter 1, "The facts of light," including sensors, color temperatures, metering, histograms, white balance, and the basics of exposure.

THE ESSENTIAL LIGHTING MANUAL FOR DIGITAL AND FILM PHOTOGRAPHERS

Another potentially useful volume is Chris Weston's The essential lighting manual for digital and film photographers. The chapters on understanding light, metering and exposure, close-up and macro lighting, artificial light, and studio lighting are especially valuable.

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DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXPERT: CLOSE-UP PHOTOGRAPHY

If you're looking for help with an occasional close-up or macro photograph of something small, such as the head of a screw, you'll probably find sufficient information in one of the general books mentioned above. But if you want or need an in-depth manual on close-up photography, you might well turn to Michael Freeman's Digital photography expert: Close-up photography. Freeman points out some of the difficulties with photographing up close, such as lack of depth of field and problems of lighting, and he shows you how to fix them with equipment in the case of lighting, and with taking more than one image and layering them in the case of poor depth of field. This is an idea book. If your work is in software or hardware, don't look for anything too specific. However, you should find plenty of material to stimulate your creative thinking.

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PROFESSIONAL TECHNIQUES FOR BLACK & WHITE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

If you're seeking an advocate for black and white photography, don't miss Professional techniques for black & white digital photography, by Patrick Rice. Although the emphasis is on portrait, wedding, and landscape photography, Rice's arguments for the power of black and white over color will give you much to think about. The book's procedures for changing color into black and white include instructions for creating an infrared effect in PhotoShop and for tweaking images after you convert them to grayscale.

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REFERENCES

Freeman, Michael. 2004. Digital photography expert: Close-up photography. New York, NY: Lark Books. [ISBN 1-57990-544-7. 160 pages, including index. $27.95 USD (softcover).]

______. 2004. Digital photography expert: Light and lighting. New York, NY: Lark Books. [ISBN 1-57990-526-9. 160 pages, including index. $24.95 USD (softcover).]

Huss, Dave. 2004. How to do everything with digital photography. Emeryville, CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne. [ISBN 0-07-225435-1. 336 pages, including index. $29.99 USD (softcover).]

King, Julie Adair. 2003. Shoot Like a Pro! Digital Photography Techniques. Emeryville, CA, McGraw-Hill/Osborne. [ISBN 0-07-222949-7. 236 pages, including index. $24.99 USD (softcover).

Perkins, Michelle. 2005. The practical guide to digital imaging: Mastering the terms, technologies, and techniques. Buffalo, NY: Amherst Media. [ISBN 1-58428-150-2. 126 pages, including index. $29.95 USD (softcover).]

Rice, Patrick. 2005. Professional techniques for black & white digital photography. Buffalo, NY: Amherst Media. [ISBN 1-58428-149-9. 128 pages, including index. $29.95 USD (softcover).]

Simon, Dan. 2004. Digital photography bible: Desktop edition. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc. [ISBN 0-7645-6875-2. 476 pages, including index. $24.99 USD (softcover).]

Timacheff, Serge, and David Karlins. 2005. Total digital photography: The shoot to print workflow handbook. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc. [ISBN 0-7645-6952-X. 334 pages, including index. $29.99 USD (softcover).]

Weston, Chris. 2004. The essential lighting manual for digital and film photographers. Mies, Switzerland: RotoVision. [ISBN 2-88046-763-2. 208 pages, including index. $35.00 USD.]

BILL SULLIVAN is a writer and photographer in San Diego, CA.

TABLE 1: BOOKS ON DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY COMPARED

Title                Audience          Strengths

Digital photography  Novice and above  * Detailed advice of interest to
bible                                    technical communicators
                                       * Section: For professionals in
                                         other fields
Shoot like a pro!    Novice and above  * Other Fields Quick advice
                                       * Section: 35 secrets the pros
                                         know
Total digital        Experienced       * Coverage of everything from
photography: The       picture-takers    digital technology to taking
shoot to print                           pictures to editing and storing
workflow handbook                        images
How to do            Novice and above  * Detailed advice of interest to
everything with                          technical communicators
digital                                * Section: For professionals in
photography                              other fields
Digital photography  Intermediate and  * Helpful sections on indoor
expert: Light and      above             daylight, bright window
lighting                                 techniques, and fluorescent
                                         light
The essential        Intermediate and  * Chapters on close-up and macro
lighting manual        above             lighting, the daylight studio,
                                         artificial light and studio
                                         lighting
Digital photography  Intermediate and  * Addresses backgrounds, shiny
expert: Close-up       above             objects, eliminating shadows,
photography                              and describes possible setups
Practical guide to   Newbies           * Quick overview of digital
digital imaging                          photography
Professional         Intermediate and  * Author's advocacy of black and
techniques for         above             white
black and white                        * Chapters on exposure, lighting
photography                              and composition
                                       * Chapter on converting color to
                                         black and white

Title                Weaknesses            Publisher and Cost

Digital photography  * Lack of in-depth    Wiley
bible                  lighting info       $24.99 USD
                     * Lack of in-depth
                       info on shooting
                       close-ups
Shoot like a pro!                          McGraw-Hill/Osborne
                                           $24.99 USD
Total digital        * Lack of specifics   Wiley
photography: The       for technical       $29.99 USD
shoot to print         communication
workflow handbook
How to do            * Lack of in-depth    McGraw-Hill/Osborne
everything with        lighting info       $24.99 USD
digital              * Lack of in-depth
photography            info on shooting
                       close-ups
Digital photography                        Lark Books
expert: Light and                          $27.95 USD
lighting
The essential                              RotoVision
lighting manual                            $35.00 USD
Digital photography                        Lark Books
expert: Close-up                           $27.95 USD
photography
Practical guide to                         Amherst Media
digital imaging                            $29.95 USD
Professional         * Written for         Amherst Media
techniques for         photographers       $29.95 USD
black and white        of weddings,
photography            portraits and
                       landscapes, not
                       technical
                       communication