Photography: The New Complete Guide to Taking Photographs

This book is wonderfully designed and covers everything a beginner as well as more advanced photographer could ask for. It is perfect for an advanced amateur/ semi-professional, such as myself, who's been shooting for several years and has a good grasp on aperture, shutter speed, and exposure. It's packed with a ton of information, and covers a wide range of topics, from the basics of different types of cameras, lenses, filters, and film, to the more advanced topics of panning, portraiture, macro, nudes (indoors as well as outdoors), shooting underwater, aerial photography, still life, interiors/ exteriors, urban and rural landscapes, mixed lighting, and even photographing food! And there's more! I especially liked the fact that this book even included discussions on cross-processing, digital toning, and polaroid emulsion lifts! In the Travel photograhy section, It even offers advice on the different lighting conditions one would face depending on all four of the seasons. His style of writing is very straightforward and to the point, and easy to absorb. Every page is filled with gorgeous photographs and great examples of good and bad solutions for each of the situations discussed. I've learned so much from it and feel that it was definetely $19.99 well spent (I bought it from a bookstore a year ago). It is like an encyclopedia on photography, and I just ordered his other books from the series - The Photographer's Guide to ... I bought the ones on Compostion, Black and White, Light, and Portraits. I feel that at about $13 -$15 each, they are an excellent way to add to my library. ;-) There are other topics covered in this series, but before getting too excited and buying them all, I am waiting to see if his books in the series that I just ordered are as informative as the one I just reviewed. To sum it up, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in owning an informative, well-written and beautifully photographed book on a wide range of topics in photography! Definitely worth the money!

If you think yourself as a serious beginner and wanna teach yourself photography, get this book. I borrowed this book from local public library, and I love it instantly. First, this book covers a lot of topics, which make me feel it's universal ^_^ form "One-use camera" to "Digital toning", all of them were well organized into 2pages and fit under 4 categories: Basic techniques, Photographing People, Travel Photography, Advanced Techniques. Second, In every topic, the author give you detailed technics to shoot right, plus the wrong/right picture samples, it's very easy to read and follow. To me, this book can be used as an Text book for Practicing Photography 101, - what you need to add are some quizes and home work after every chapter. How to use this book? Read this book, grab a camera and shoot! After practicing the technics or tricks the book covered, I'm sure you will shoot much better the most of other people.

I liked this book alot. It had a lot of information- as well as pictures to go along. I would Definitely Consider this book among others for first timers.

This book does just what it promises on the cover and more, it doesn't just guide you, it shows how to take great photographs! As a portrait photographer I found the chapter on studio lighting very helpful, and I found the other tips and examples truly inspiring. John Freeman not only writes clearly, he manages to get his message accross with great images, his photography style is refreshing without being pretentious, his landscapes are crisp and masterfully executed, and above all his captions do what they are suposed to do, they explain in detail how the result was obtained. This is a great book for any photography enthusiast, at any proficiency level, a worthy addition to any photography library.

This book talks about so many different aspects of taking photographs, and every step is so well illustrated, that everyone will find it very useful. The lay out of each chapter is very well-organized, and all details of photographing are described in understandable terms. I was very interested in photographic people, and I expected to get a couple of pages covering that at most. However, John Freeman went into detail showing how to photograph children, families, portraits and naked bodies. The examples he provided were stunning! I can't wait to try out new ideas I got from this book!