Digital Portrait Photography and Lighting: Take Memorable Shots Every Time [Paperback]

In the magic world of photographers' dreams, a portrait reveals the inner person. After years of pursuing this dream, I'm happy with a good likeness. This book aims at the latter, although it acknowledges the former as a goal. It also makes it clear that good portrait photography is about lighting. Unfortunately, the book may be a little difficult to use easily.

The book is organized into four parts. After a brief introduction, the first part tells you about the equipment that you need for portrait photography, including cameras, lenses and lights. Experienced photographers will find it a bit elementary but its purpose is to give every reader an equal understanding of the tools. A meaty chapter deals with the standard lighting configuration for portraits, which is the basic model that one then modifies for most portraits.

The second part deals with composition and posing and the idea of separating the two provides a useful approach for portrait photography. The third part deals with photographing under different lighting conditions, including outdoors, existing indoor light and studio lighting. The final part deals with post-production techniques.

While I think the book covers almost everything that one needs to know to take good portraits, its structure is to provide many different tips that often seem unrelated, rather than a comprehensive framework for approaching portrait photography. While this may be due to the nature of the task, I have found other books that were not nearly as comprehensive to be more clearly organized. For example, an old favorite of mine, "Professional Secrets of Natural Light Portrait Photography" by Douglas Allen Box provided a clear approach to its more limited subject than this book.

The post production section of the book is less effective than the first three parts. In the first three parts, for example, the authors assumed the readers knew the fundamentals of exposure and provided tips on the specific problems of portrait exposure. This final part seemed mostly to deal in generalities. Portrait photography seems an ideal place for some of Photoshop's tools, like the techniques for reducing the signs of age. But this book did not contain any specifics about such techniques. The Photoshop user interested in those kinds of details will have to find the information elsewhere, like Scott Kelby's smart alecky, but useful books.

There was also a curious appendix on going into business that was much too brief to do anything but suggest that there are a lot of considerations involved in making a living from portrait photography.

I found the photographs in the book quite interesting and a possible source of inspiration. The authors are not afraid to cut off parts of the face, or shoot from unusual angles. These approaches may not always please a CEO looking for a standard shot, but they do create interesting art.

Despite its shortcomings, this book did provide me with more information than any single portrait photography book I've read.

After reading the description on the back cover of what I would find in the book... and then reading the book.. I was left thinking huh???? Did I miss something???

Although the book does have a few good tips, it does not deliver on what the description says it will. Many items were just glazed over. The biggest flaw was that the image samples did not match the text around them.

Although the book was fully of some cool looking images... many were taken with a ring light (you can tell this by the donut shaped catch light in the models eye). I love the look of ringflash images, but found this very disturbing and out of place in many sections. For example: when reading about main, fill & key lights, lighting ratios, backlighting, side lighting, multiple light setups, etc... then to be shown samples where none of these techniques were used. The images shown were done with a ring light. This can only lead the reader to beleive that they too can get these cool looking images with what is described in the text... and that is misleading, because they can not.

The lighting diagrams were nice, but it would have been a good thing to include actual images taken with these setups, so that the read could understand what the image would look like when using these setups.

I think the Basic Image Editing chapter was very well written with wonderful examples of what was written about. I wish the rest of the book would have been done as well as this chapter.

I loved all the cool images.. it was very refreshing to see hip new shots. Maybe they should have been in a different book though.. maybe one on taking cool images with alternative lighting.. like the ring flash.

I first purchased this book to show support for another Flickr member. I figured it would be a nice book about portrait photography with some nice photographs. I was pleasantly surprised when my book arrived and I realized it was a very comprehensive book on the subject of portrait photography!

I have to tell you...I think this is the best book on portrait photography and lighting that I've read to date. I have quite a few books on the subject, and I wish this one had been released sooner. Would have saved me a few bucks. :D

The book is well written and easy to understand. It has great lighting setup diagrams, and the best part is the collection of wonderful photo examples. Every other photography book out there seems to have the most out-dated photos! Most of them look like they were taken in the 80s, but these are current and just fantastic.

The book also gives SPECIFIC examples for headshots, glamour shots, and other portrait scenarios which is unbelievably helpful. It will probably become my new photography bible. LOL

Photography is a technical art form, and it's easy to get bogged down in things like apertures, shutter speeds, and lighting ratios. So many other books out there seem to "dumb down" the technical side of photography, much to my dismay, but this book is a good balance between the two. I highly recommend it to anyone out there who's interested in portrait photography.

Many thanks to Catherine and everyone else who helped out with the book! It's wonderful. :)