I love eBooks!
Especially photography eBooks.
They are inexpensive, packed full of useful information, take up no space on my shelf and are an endless source of inspiration.
Every year the quality of the books seems to get better and better. Either that or I’m finding better sources! Either way, there were some great reads in 2012!
Whether you are new to photography or if you have been at it for awhile you’re sure to find something in this collection that will help you along your creative journey.
1. “Slow” by Andrew S. Gibson
Andrew Gibson delves into the magical world of long exposures as our camera records scenes that are very different from what our eyes can see.
In “Slow” Gibson thoroughly covers the essential techniques of long exposure photography and includes stunning full page images to illustrate the moody and evocative images you can create yourself with Gibson’s guidance.
2. “Rabari: Encounters with the Nomadic Tribe” by Mitchell Kanashkevich
If you tend to avoid people in your travel photography, this eBook was written for you.
In “Rabari” Kanashkevish walks through the stunning portrait on the cover and 9 other travel portrait images detailing the exact steps he went through to make each one. He explains what he saw, how he envisioned the photograph, and how he made it happen.
I find that many travel documentary images include stereotypes, shock imagery, or images of poverty. While it is important to increase awareness of issues like poverty, I feel there are not enough positive images in the world. It is always an image of a bedraggled, homeless, sad person with wrinkles in black and white.
Kanashkevish’s ebook contains images of beauty, wisdom, emotion, youth, and colour – it is refreshing to see such a positive view.
3. “Creative Photography Techniques” by Dan Bailey
This Kindle book by Dan Bailey is a collection of tips that will help you add excitement into your photography and create more dramatic images.
In “Creative Photography Techniques” Bailey offers 20 tips that are short, concise and easy to remember. They will help you stretch your creativity and inspire you to begin experimenting with your own photography.
Each technique is illustrated with three image examples that let you see how it can be applied to a subject.
Highlights include light, composition, colour, story telling, point of view, lens choice and more. As well, Bailey shares his 4 ingredients for a great image.
You do not necessarily require a Kindle to read the book. You can also read it on your computer via Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader.
4. “Lightroom 4 Unmasked” by Piet Van den Eynde
In this comprehensive eBook over 300 pages, author Piet Van den Eynde goes through a typical Lightroom workflow and presents 60 case studies showing before and after images detailing how they were processed.
Lightroom 4 Unmasked is perfect for the beginner who needs to learn Lightroom from the ground up. It also contains more advanced information for readers who are already familiar with image editing.
Find out why I recommend Lightroom for post-processing and read my full review of the eBook here.
5. “Trey’s Bonus Bundle” by Trey Ratcliff
Ok, maybe this one isn’t exactly fair since it’s 5 eBooks in itself. But I couldn’t pick just one. The collection is worth every penny. It’s like a treasure chest!
Trey Ratcliff’s eBooks are not only stunningly beautiful but also chock full of extremely useful advice for the novice or intermediate photographer.
Of course you can buy each of his eBooks separately but I highly recommend the bundle. Not only does it give you 25% off, but the range of topics is ideal. I learned a ton from these books and keep returning to them again and again.
The bundle includes these beautiful ebooks:
Top 10 HDR Mistakes Sample Pages
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Digital Workflow Sample Pages
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Composing The Photo Sample Pages
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10 Essential Photoshop Skills Sample Pages
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10 Principles Of Beautiful Photography Sample Pages
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Get more information about Trey’s bonus bundle or check out the individual books here.
So there you have it! My 5 favourite eBooks from 2012. Oh, wait, there’s one more!
Last year I released my own eBook “8 Ways To Accelerate Your Photography” which will help you accelerate your photography learning curve. In it I share with you the quickest and most effective techniques in 8 core knowledge areas that are essential for today’s photographer.
This eBook clearly explains exactly what you need to know in each area including: understanding your camera settings, composition techniques, post-processing, understanding natural light, finding your niche, creating a killer portfolio, getting on the web and making money.
Find out more about the eBook here.
I hope you found something in this list that will help inspire your photography in the coming year.
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Lisa Gordon says
January 17, 2013 at 12:46 pmThank you so much for sharing, Anne.
The LR4 book is amazing!
Happy day to you!
Anne McKinnell says
January 21, 2013 at 9:56 amYou are welcome Lisa, I’m glad you are enjoying the LR4 book. I sure found it helpful.
larry says
February 1, 2013 at 9:52 amI’ll ask this again because I lost track of where the other question will show up. As you ebooks are incredible, what program/publisher do you use, if you can share that. I’m considering an ebook for my daughter and grandchildren. Thank you. I would have loved to do what you are doing, keep up the good work, and we look forward to you next issues.
Anne McKinnell says
February 4, 2013 at 7:17 pmHi Larry, I know we communicated about this by email, but just in case anyone else is interested I will copy the information here:
I do two versions of my ebooks. One is the PDF version I have on my own website and the other is a version for e-reader devices like the kindle.
For the PDF version, I use Keynote (the Mac version of Microsoft PowerPoint) to do the layout and then I save it to PDF format. For the free ones, I just let people download the PDF directly. The one that I sell I use ejunkie.com to handle the payment processing and delivery of the document.
For the e-reader versions, they cannot have the fancy layout. They are just text, photo, text, photo. I use Pages (the Mac version of Microsoft Word). Every e-reader like kindle and nook etc. has it’s own format the books have to be in. What I do is upload the final version to Smashwords.com. They have a service where they take your document and convert it to all the various formats and then send it out to the resellers, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks etc. There is no fee for the service, but they take a percentage of sales.