Clickbait?
The title of this book sparks an allergic reaction in me, just like if the book was titled something like “how to get filthy rich in a matter of minutes”. It’s clickbait – it is impossible for anyone to live up to the expectations created by the title.
But I do stand corrected. This is a great book about the basics of photography. And if you pay attention to what is being written by Henry Carroll and truly apply that to your photography, I am sure you will be a better photographer. Maybe your images will not be “great” as the title promises, but for sure they will be better. Much better!
Theory and practice
Henrys concept for the book is simple and yet powerful: each subject is presented using only 2 pages: one page elaborating on the subject and another page showing an image that illustrates how the subject presented has been applied by another photographer. So it is full of illustrations of how the principles and advice presented in the book has been used or applied by other photographers.
This book is part of a series – Henry has written books more focused on say portrait photography or pictures of places. But this one is the basic one – the 101 so to speak. Yet it managers to cover both the very basics photography like exposure and the more artistic dimension to photography. And he does it in a way where the subjects are wove into each other in a very elegant way so you really don’t notice how much ground this little 140 pages book covers.
You will find books that are dedicated to say exposure, which this book deals with in a matter of a few pages. So of course you will not get all the details and all the angles. But you will get a very good grid or overview of what you need to know about photography, and then you can branch out from this book to other sources with more details.
Boom!
One of the sentences in this book actually hit me like a hammer – a big fat sledgehammer if you’d like. It said: “Average photographers imitate beauty. Great photographers create their own”. Maybe the reaction from my side is more a reflection of where I am in my photography life, but those two sentences surely put something straight that I had been struggling to understand for some time: why some of my images seemed to work while others were just meh.
I cannot guarantee that you will have a similar eureka! moment when reading this book, but I am certain that if you are new to photography and want to get a really fast run down and overview of the basics coupled with a few high flyers on creativity and art, this is one of the best books I have come across to meet that objective. Highly recommended!
Video link
Further reading
Review: Understanding exposure by Bryan Peterson
Review: Photo basics by Joel Sartore
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