Book Review: Digital Art Photography for Dummies by Matthew Bamberg - Page 2

Bamberg has a writing style that I generally refer to as "the patience of a saint." He goes into generous detail about pretty much every step of the digital photography process — from selecting a computer and accessory components, to the actual camera and what all those strange buttons are supposed to do, all the way to saving images for printing and the best type of paper to use for different prints. For those of you unsure if some of this will be over your head or not, it’s an exacting approach that is not going to leave you in the dark. The writing style is a bit corny, but an easy read, and includes a very generous amount of sample shots (both bad and good, "before" and "after") that help more readily explain some of the techniques explained in the book.

In typical Dummies fashion, it's geared towards people more inclined to add when it comes to instructive book reading. It's littered with little symbol things on the margins and a healthy amount of inset boxes, which I'm assuming are to help visually break up the task of going through the chapters. Although not my personal favorite way to read, it does have some tangible benefits for further study (which I'll explain in a minute).

One of the nicest things about the book is the very clear and ordered arrangement of the information. It's almost a literal progression of events for the whole process, from the start of selecting equipment to the end of framing your finished prints, with each chapter further broken down in the table of contents so that you really can find anything he touches on in a matter of seconds. (I'm guilty of using this myself, as I immediately jumped to the sections on shooting at night to help with some issues I was having, before eventually going back and reading through the book in order.) Although most people may not need everything in the book, it is laid out in a fashion that makes it very easy to skip to the information you need.

As for the actual content, or "meat" of the book, it contains some really nice tips anyone could benefit from, whether its techniques for basic composition of shots or digging into the presets and manual options of your camera to help capture the best results for the particular situation you're trying to shoot. Especially with the chapters "Shooting For Color" and "Night Art Photography," there will be plenty of instances where you can't really know the best option, but rather need to try several techniques and then work with the results later at your computer. In that sense, Bamberg does a great job of helping you think about not only opportunities your given circumstances might yield before you get there, but also ways to take advantage of "bad" circumstances to achieve something entirely different. If nothing else, he tries to hammer home the idea that photography is not a list of "do this, then this, and then everything will be perfect," but more the sense of knowing enough of the fundamentals to be able to adapt to and be open to finding situations as they come up.

Article Author: David R Perry

Lost somewhere in the rolling hills of Tennessee, David R Perry can occasionally be found doing dark, unspeakable things to words. Printed words, spoken words, electronically mangled words... really any kind but twittered words.

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