Lighting Secrets for the Professional Photographer

By Alan Brown

Book Overview

For amateur photographers or professionals wanting to improve their work, this text takes you step-by-step through 31 photo shoots where the authors outline what they wanted to achieve and how they... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898794129
• ISBN13: 9780898794120
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.8" x 0.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Probably the best real-world lighting guide produced.

This book is a must-have for the studio photographer who desires complete ownership of the process as well as mastery over the final image. It is a collection of 31 photo shoots, each starting with a concept and a lighting diagram; many times, problems surface at the start, and the authors do a great job of showing the incremental steps taken and the thought processes behind the arrival at a solution. Note that these are all assigned projects, whether commercial or editorial in nature; learning to think and creatively solve problems in a real-world construct make this the ultimate studio lighting guide, bar none.

Multiple Polaroids Teach the Effects of Changes in Lighting

I disagree with the review below titled "Limited book." As an intermediate amateur photographer, I learned a lot from "Lighting Secrets..." Virtually all the 31 shoots are indeed creative. I have not seen multiple Polaroids showing the effects of changes in lighting (pp. 46-133) in any other book. Freeman's "...Studio Manual" has only a few pages devoted to lighting. My only complaints about "Lighting Secrets..." are: (A) The title should have the word "studio," since the book does not cover natural lighting. (B) Chapter Two (pp.17-43) on the "Whys of Lighting" shows only a single lighting diagram and a single photo from each shoot. (C) The images on pages 109 and 125, manipulated using 1990 computer technology, are not very attractive. (D) The photo on p. 113 (identical to the cover) should be swapped with the photos on p. 115. (E) It would have been nice to know the film, camera, and lens for each shoot.

unique in that it shows the inevitable changes during shoot

I own many lighting books. Although not a beginners how to book, it does show the shots that were taken before the final shot. This is unique! The reader is able to see and read about the small changes that are made in working towards perfection. Most other books show the final shot with minimal verbage. This book discuses very detailed lighting adjustments that are made and the sequences of shots relating to them