With The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography, those mysterious icons, strange jargon, and dizzying array of imaging software and hardware quickly become tools to create great pictures.Illustrated with full-color photos for guidance, this easy, practical, lesson-based workbook gives you a step-by-step tutorial in getting bright, crisp, beautiful pictures from your digital camera every time. Assignments at the end of each chapter give you the opportunity to go out and test your new skills in real life.Learn about exposure, file formats and quality settings, low-light photography, digital filters and white balance, composition and lens choice, manipulating images, printing, and much more, all in a handy, bring-along format. Everyone who wants to create great photos needs The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography!

    "The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop" is devoted exclusively to the topic and shows you how to make the most of that control. Now that raw image processing technology has matured as an essential aspect of digital photography, you need a modern book that takes a seasoned approach to the technology and explains the advantages and challenges of using Lightroom or Camera Raw to produce magnificent images. Renowned photographer and bestselling author Jeff Schewe outlines a foolproof process for working with these digital negatives and presents his real-world expertise on optimizing raw images. You ll also learn hands-on techniques for exposing and shooting for raw image capture and developing a raw processing workflow, as well as Photoshop techniques for perfecting the master image, converting color to black and white, and processing for panoramic and HDR images. Get the best tone and color from your digital negatives. Use Lightroom and Camera Raw sharpening controls to maximize image quality. Take advantage of Photoshop to do what Lightroom and Camera Raw can t. Produce stunning black-and-white images. Visit the book s companion website at TheDigitalNegativeBook.com for sample images and more!"

    She then discusses lighting and composition and shows how to style food using props, fabrics, and tabletops. Finally, she explains how to improve your photos through sharpening, color enhancement, and other editing techniques. Beautifully illustrated with large, vibrant photos, this book offers the practical advice and expert shooting tips you need to get the food images you want every time you pick up your camera. Follow along with your friendly and knowledgeable guide, photographer and author Nicole S. Young, and you will: •      Use your camera’s settings to gain full control over the look and feel of your images •      Master the photographic basics of composition, focus, depth of field, and much more •      Learn to enhance your food photographs using professional food styling techniques •      Get tips on different types of lighting, including strobes, flashes, and natural light •      Improve the look of your photos using Adobe Photoshop •      Go “behind the scenes” and walk through the process of creating great food photographs with an entire chapter of start-to-finish examples And once you’ve got the shot, show it off! Join the book’s Flickr group to share your photos, recipes, and tips at flickr.com/group/foodphotographyfroms....

    From his famously controversial portrait of President George H.W. Bush (which led to the revocation of Heisler’s White House clearance) to his evocative post-9/11 Time magazine cover of Rudolph Giuliani, to stunning portraits of Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Hillary Clinton, Michael Phelps, Muhammad Ali, and many more, Heisler reveals the creative and technical processes that led to each frame. For Heisler’s fans and all lovers of photography, Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits offers not only a gorgeous collection of both black-and-white and color portraits, but an engrossing look at the rarely seen art of a master photographer at work. With a foreword by New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

    I want there to be a combination of the past juxtaposed with the modern. I use nature to symbolize the search, saving a tree, watering the earth. In this fabricated world, strange clouds of smog float by; there are holes in the sky. These mythic images mirror our world, where nature is domesticated, controlled, and destroyed. Through my work I explore technology and a poetry of existence. These can be very heavy, overly didactic issues to convey in art, so I choose to portray them through a more theatrically absurd approach.--Robert ParkeHarrison

    Purity, elegance, and passion are the hallmarks of Strand's imagery. This inaugural volume of Aperture's "Masters of Photography" series presents 41 of Strand's greatest photographs, drawn from a career that spanned six decades. Included are his earliest experimental efforts, created from 1915 to 1917, which Alfred Stieglitz declared had begun to redefine the medium. Subsequent photographs reveal the artist's impeccable vision in locales as diverse as New England and the Outer Hebrides, France and Ghana. During Strand's last years, he concentrated on still lifes and the poignant beauty of his own garden at Orgeval, France.In an introductory essay, Mark Haworth-Booth, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, provides an overview of the artist's life and his enduring contribution to photography.

    This friendly and informative guide is the essential how-to book for shooting gorgeous instant pictures with personal panache and a touch of romance. Packed with tips on how to shoot with various cameras, details about the different types of film available, advice on composition and lighting techniques, plus creative projects to transform snapshots into keepsake mementos and portfolios of beautiful images for inspiration, this is the ultimate companion for capturing instant memories.

    In the years that followed, she published other notable monographs, including "Aila" (2004), "The Eyes, the Ear" (2005) and "Semear" (2007). And now, ten years after her precipitous entry onto the international stage, Aperture has published "Illuminance," the latest volume of Kawauchi's work and the first to be published outside of Japan. Kawauchi's photography has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as its ability to incite wonder via careful attention to tiny gestures and the incidental details of her everyday environment. As Sean O'Hagan, writing in "The Guardian" in 2006, noted, "there is always some glimmer of hope and humanity, some sense of wonder at work in the rendering of the intimate and fragile." In "Illuminance," Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane, drawn to the fundamental cycles of life and the seemingly inadvertent, fractal-like organization of the natural world into formal patterns. Gorgeously produced as a clothbound volume with Japanese binding, this impressive compilation of previously unpublished images is proof of Kawauchi's unique sensibility and her ongoing appeal to lovers of photography.

    Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 28-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront of Chinese artists' battle for creative freedom. Like his champion Ai Weiwei, Ren was controversial in his homeland and wildly popular in the rest of the world. He said, -I don't really view my work as taboo, because I don't think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don't intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.- Why? Because his models, friends, and increasingly, fans, are naked, often outdoors, high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing, stacked like building blocks, heads wrapped in octopi, body cavities sprouting phone cords and flowers, whatever enters his mind at the moment. He denies his intentions are sexual, and there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images: the urine, the insertions, the many, many erections. In a 2013 interview VICE magazine asked, -there are a lot of dicks ... do you just like dicks?- Ren responded, -It's not just dicks I'm interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way.- True though that may be, the penises Ren photographed are not just fresh and vivid, but unusually large, making one wonder just where he met his friends. In the same piece, Hang also stated, -Gender isn't important when I'm taking pictures, it only matters to me when I'm having sex, - making him a pioneer of gender inclusiveness. Young fans still eagerly flock to his website, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. His photographs, all produced on film, have been the subject of over 20 solo and 70 group shows in his brief six-year career, in cities as disparate as Tokyo, Athens, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vienna, and yes, even Beijing. He self-published 16 monographs, in tiny print runs, that now sell for up to $600. TASCHEN's Ren Hang is his only international collection, covering his entire career, with well-loved favorites and many never-before-seen photos of men, women, Beijing, and those many, many erections. We take solace remembering Ren's joy when he first held the book, shared by his long-time partner Jiaqi, featured on the cover.Text in English, French, and German

    360 photos, 42 in color. 94 line drawings.

    Award-winning photographer Annie Griffiths culled the images to reflect the many variations on the universal theme of beauty. Chapters are organized around the aesthetic concepts that create beauty in a photograph: Light, Composition, Moment (Gesture and Emotion), Motion, Palette, and Wonder.Beyond the introduction and brief essays about each featured concept, the text is light. The photographs speak for themselves, enhanced by lyrical quotes from scholars and poets. In the chapter on Light, for example, we read these words of whimsical wisdom from songwriter Leonard Cohen: "Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the lights get in." And then the images flow, of light entering scenes via windows, clouds, and spotlights, from above, alongside, and behind, casting radiance upon young ballerinas and weathered men, into groves of autumn trees and island-dotted seas, revealing everything it touches to be beautiful beyond expectation.To illuminate the theme of Wonder, Griffiths chose a wish from Andre Bazin: "If I had influence with the good fairy...I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life." This thought is juxtaposed with an exquisite vision in white, a frame filled with the snowy-pure dots and rays of a bird's fan tail. And on it goes, picture after tantalizing picture, alive with wondrous beauty.When she created National Geographic Simply Beautiful Photographs, Annie Griffiths set two goals: to maximize visual delight, and to create a book unique in the world of publishing--one in which many of the photographs could be purchased as prints. She has succeeded on both counts. Many of these stunning images are available for order, and there can be no doubt as to the visual delight. You must open this book for yourself, and take in its radiant beauty.

    "The London, Upton, Stone series has helped over 1,000,000 photography students capture their potential. After a very successful first edition, this second edition returns with the most up-to-date industry knowledge. Modeled after the long-running and widely used "A ""Short Course in Photography, " a brief text which presents the medium entirely in its most updated form.

    This beautifully illustrated guide will not only enhance your understanding of how to bring out the best in every woman, but also sharpen your photography skills in order to capture her successfully. Whether shooting with a pro model, plain-Jane, curvy gal, or soccer mom, Christa gets to know her subject intimately in order to help her look and feel beautiful, sexy, and confident. Christa shares her personal tips and techniques throughout the entire process, creating an amazing experience that produces photographs packed with emotion. She covers every step in creating a successful boudoir shoot, including how to prepare a subject who has never posed before, coaching sensual movement, beautiful lighting setups with minimal equipment, how to flatter every figure, and more. With "Before and After" profiles and "Do and Don't" scenarios throughout, essential lists, practical tips for male photographers, metadata for every shot, as well as post-processing techniques in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, this book offers clear and inspiring instruction. The Art of Boudoir Photography is about transformation. It's about cultivating sex appeal and enthusiastic positivity. It's that jolt of confidence and bolt of sexual prowess to tease out of your subject. It's for each woman to recognize her individual beauty, provide an opportunity for her to break through her comfort zone, honor her body, and celebrate femininity. For photographers with varying levels of experience, this book is for you-to appreciate and embrace boudoir photography, enhance your understanding of what it is, what it can do for women, and most importantly, how to have fun with it!

    And rightly so. The marriage of LaChapelle’s vivid, high-octane images with graphic artist, Tadanori Yokoo’s supersaturated designs make for an astonishing physical object. The reissue of this now classic, long out-of-print volume showcases all the lollipop giddiness of the original now lavishly reproduced in a larger format. “There’s a tradition of celebrity portraiture that attempts to uncover the ‘real person’ behind the trappings of their celebrity. I am more interested in those trappings,” says LaChapelle. Indeed, he exaggerates the artificiality of fame and Hollywood culture in a head on collision of color, plastic, and whimsy. His photographs confront our visual taste and challenge our ideas of celebrity, all the while taking us on a roller coaster ride through his hyper-sensationalized galaxy. Lil’ Kim becomes the ultimate status symbol, tattooed in the Louis Vuitton pattern. Madonna rises from pink waters as a mystical dragon princess. Pamela Anderson hatches out of an egg; and Alexander McQueen burns down the castle dressed as the Queen of Hearts. David LaChapelle’s uncompromising originality is legendary in the worlds of fashion, film, and advertising. His images, both bizarre and gorgeous, have appeared on and in between the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Vibe and more. La Chapelle Land is fun park America gone surrealistically wrong — but in such an attractive way.

    . . . This book is for the artist or non-artist, for the person who gets plain English, for the person who understands that practical talk can coax out the mystical messages that lie underneath." —Steve Martin Art has the power to change our lives. For many, becoming an artist is a lifelong dream. But how to make it happen? In How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, one of the art world’s most celebrated and passionate voices, offers an indispensable handbook for creative people of all kinds. From the first sparks of inspiration—and how to pursue them without giving in to self-doubt—Saltz offers invaluable insight into what really matters to emerging artists: originality, persistence, a balance between knowledge and intuition, and that most precious of qualities, self-belief. Brimming with rules, prompts, and practical tips, How to Be an Artist gives artists new ways to break through creative blocks, get the most from materials, navigate career challenges, and above all find joy in the work.Teeming with full-color artwork from visionaries ancient and modern, this beautiful and useful book will help artists of all kinds—painters, photographers, writers, performers—realize their dreams.