Book Review : The Photography Workshop series of books by Aperture
Its great to buy a photography book, new or old, with no expectations and then upon reading, wonder how you ever took a photo prior to reading it. Not that books suddenly make all your average photos turn in to great ones of course, but I find they do focus you on to what does work and what doesn't. Books and research help you improve your self filtering, your own critique methods, and by default, raise your own standards. Photography books are generally of two types - educational/functional or portfolio based. Portfolio based are great to just view a favourite or challenging photographers' body of work or specific project.
The educational and functional books can also frustrate the hell out of you - by being too detailed or esoteric; or too vague and floaty; or just plain boring.
Having recently re-read the aperture series of Photography Workshop books, I think these are one of the best mix of both formats - educational and portfolio - that I have come across. And more importantly they deliver in spades on great images and great insight and education content.
(Aperture is a not for profit photography foundation that links photographers with their audience through print, online, and in-person).
The general format for all four books in the series is on each page there is a photo, and then the particular guest photographer talking about broad concepts of photography mixed with some specifics about the photo being shown. That's it. Some times the comments are lengthy and involved, other times they are light and soft. But put together it all works so well towards inspiring and educating the reader that you rarely feeling like putting the books down.
Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris are just so creative in the way that they explain their photo as it relates to street; Mary Ellen Mark is clearly a great teacher as well because her comments about her photos are so clear and thoughtful and accessible; they all just work really well as a read and reference material.
In the interest of Buy Books Not Gear living, I have really enjoyed reading and using these books and hope to use them again and again. Highly recommended.