Photo Book
Reviews
Alphabetized by Title
| A-Ad | Ad-An | Ar-Au | B | C-
| A-Ad |
Ad-An | Ar-Au |
B | C- Co |
Co-Cr | D-Di
| Di- Dy | E
| F | G |
H-Hi |
| Hi-Ho | I-J
| K-L | L(2) M |
N | O |
P-Ph | Ph
| Ph(2) |
Ph(3) | Ph(4)- Pr |
Q-R |
|S-Sp | Sp-Su
| T | UV |
W | XYZ |
Apogee Photo Home Page
All Reviews are by Paul W Faust unless otherwise noted as Michael Fulks (MF)
and Elizabeth Powis (EP).
To purchase any book or to find out pricing information, click
on any of the book images.
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National Geographic Encyclopedia of Space
by Linda K. Glover
This new National Geographic book on space is probably the most
complete book I have ever seen of the subject. It covers everything
from the big bang, up to the Mars missions, and not just what the
United States has done, but all other countries as well. It would
not be possible to list every topic here, but some of the main ones
include, star formation, planets, the history of space travel from
the earliest rockets to the space station, and it has a beautiful set
of charts and maps in the back. This book will be a great addition
to any library, for both photographers and anyone interested in
astronomy. It is fully illustrated with old historical images, and
some of the most beautiful color astronomy images in print. I have
been interested in astronomy for most of my life and this book has
tons of images that I have never seen before. This one will stay in
my library as long as I can still turn a page.
This hard back book is about 10x11 inches, with 400 pages, and
retails for US-$40.00 and if a local bookstore does not have a copy
you can order it from the NG web site at:
www.nationalgeographic.com I Rate it: A++
(Reviewed Oct. 2006) |
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National Geographic Field Guides are one of the
best (almost pocket size) books you will find anywhere. The three
here, Landscapes, Digital, and Digital Black & White,
are just part of a set of these guide books that are some of the
best reference books you can get, and a great size to take along on
all of your photo trips. Each chapter starts out with a profile of
one of the many pros included, such as Jim Brandenburg, Jodi Cobb,
and Sam Abell who have been regular NG photographers for years.
Landscapes, by Robert Caputo is a must-have book
if you want to learn how the NG pros create the super images they do
and how you can do the same. This one is full of beautiful images
and the how-to info for each.
Digital, by Rob Sheppard is a great book to start
out with if you are new to using a digital camera. The info is easy
to understand and shows you just how you, too, can get results like
the NG pros do. Richly illustrated and captioned.
Digital Black & White, by Richard Olsenius is
great for getting the same results as the Digital book, but with B&W
as your final image - black & white prints really worth framing.
Each book is about 5x8.5 inches, with 160 pages, and each retails
for US$21.95. If your camera store does not have the copy you want
you can order them from the NG web site at:
www.nationalgeographic.com
I Rate all three: A++
(Reviewed Feb. 2006)
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Native Universe: Voices of
Indian America
by Gerald McMaster and Clifford E. Trafzer
This is the museum quality Inaugural Book of the National Museum of
the American Indian in Washington, DC and is filled cover to cover
with stories, information, history, and images of the Indian way of
life. Many of the images are of the items on display at this
national museum, and are works of art in themselves, while others
are historical images from photographers such as William Henry
Jackson and Edward Curtis. The museum collection includes both old
artifacts and modern day works of art and crafts. No matter which is
illustrated, they are all top quality reproductions, and the quality
of the oldest works of art are on par with anything done today. This
is one beautiful book to add to any library, photo or otherwise.
This hardback book is over 9x12 inches, with 320 pages and retails
for (only) US$40.
I rate it: A++
(Reviewed May 2006) |
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Natural Beauty, Farber Nudes,
the photography of Robert Farber, with the preface by Arnold Newman.
This is a beautiful collection of the work
of a master of nude photography. For those who know Farber's work,
no explanation is needed. For those who do not, this new book is one
of the best ways to see why the Farber name is so closely linked to
great figure photography. The book itself is as well done as all of
Farber’s images, and at 10.5x12 inches, it will be an impressive
addition to any photo library. This is not a how-to book on shooting
nudes. It is a collection of fine art images of natural beauty, the
majority of which are nudes. They are done in B&W and color, and
many have an assortment of toned effects. This soft cover book has
89 images on 207 pages and retails for US$50. It is published by
Merrell and can be ordered at
www.merrellpublishers.com
I rate it: A+++
(Reviewed July 2005)
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Nature Photography and Other
Images
by Anderson M. Renick, Jr. M.D.
These last two books are the first books that I have reviewed from
this publisher and I debated about using them here. This first one
is a nature picture book, which is almost nothing but pictures. Even
the captions are an absolute minimum with almost no information to
them, but the biggest problem I have with it is that the book seems
to have been printed with a budget for a restaurant menu, with
typing paper used for the pages, and the quality that goes with it.
Many images I couldn’t even find a single sharp area in them, and
that makes the color to suffer just as much. I am wondering if this
is a new publisher that is just starting in the business and has a
lot to learn, or just a poor production job. (see the next book
also)
This soft cover book is about 8x11 inches, with 111 pages, retails
for US$25.50 - and is published by Author House at
www.authorhouse.com
I Rate it: B-
(Reviewed
March 2007) |
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The New Adobe Creative Suite 2, Classroom in
a Book
This edition of Classroom in a Book
is out and ready to use to learn EVERYTHING about this new program
set. The Classroom in a Book series is the best selling book
to learn Adobe programs as it is put together and written by Adobe
experts. You can’t get any better than that. These books all come
with a bonus CD which contains all of the files needed to do the
step-by-step lessons, and the book is filled with illustrations and
screen shots of the tools needed to do each step and the settings
used on each. By being able to actually “see” what settings are used
there is no guesswork as to what is needed for each setting. Since
the Creative Suite package contains the major Adobe programs, this
books covers and uses all of them to create the projects, and not
just one of them like Photoshop alone.
This soft cover book is about 7x9 inch, with
308 pages and retails for US$44.99. Distributed by Peachpit Press
at
www.peachpit.com
I Rate it: A+
(Reviewed Oct. 2005)
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The New Birdhouse Book,
by Leslie Garisto
The New Birdhouse Book
is a different type of book than I usually review, but one that
could be of use to any photographer who is also good at building
things with their hands. Many of those photographers also do bird
photography, and the hardest part of that subject is getting
close enough to get a good shot. Well, if you have a backyard and
some wood, you can always build a birdhouse or two, and bring the
birds right to you. This isn’t a photography book. It is only about
building birdhouses and it includes plans for building 50 houses of
all shapes and sizes, for all sorts of birds. The book includes
material lists, diagrams, and step-by-step instructions for each
house. With springtime comes the birds and you can be ready with a
brand new house for them, and plenty of photo subjects for yourself.
The book is 7x9 inches, 189 pages, and retails for only US$19.99.
This book is also available from RockPort at:
www.rockpub.com
I rate it: A+
(Reviewed April 2005) |
Click on the above image to find out current pricing
or to purchase this book from Amazon.com |
The New Handmade Graphics, beyond
digital design,
by Anne Odling-Smee
The New Handmade Graphics,
beyond digital design is a graphics design book that
would interest many photography students. It is a collection of
design images such as would be found at a New York ad agency. It has
160 pages full of great ideas as well as all kinds of information to
go along with them. If you are a photographer who wants sell your
images, there are tons of ideas for ways to promote your work,
including the digital use of text to add to it. This is a hard cover
book, over 9x12 inches in size, and retails for US$40.00.
Both of these RotoVision books can
be checked out at
www.rockpub.com
I Rate it: A
(Reviewed Dec. 2004)
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NEW YORK DECO,
by Richard Berenholtz
Here is a beautiful, and probably one of the
best New York architectural picture books in print now or before. A
collection of images from the days of the 1920s and 30s when style
and art deco was everywhere, especially in building design. The
colors of the images on these pages are as eye-popping as it must be
on the buildings still there. Anyone who intends on going to NY
should not go without a copy of this book or you will hate yourself
when you get back and see what you could have photographed. There is
probably not another city that has the incredible amount of detail
in everything from elevator doors, to building entrances. The detail
in these buildings is more than I have ever seen in any art book
before.
This hardback book is about 9x9 inch, with
160 pages and retails for only US$22.50. Distributed by Welcome
Books at
www.welcomebooks.com
I Rate it: A+
(Reviewed Nov. 2005)
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Click on the above image to find out current pricing or
to purchase this book from Amazon.com |
Night Chicas,
by Hans NelemanFor those who like documentary books, this unique
new one may be of interest. Night Chicas is a photo
record of south of the border prostitutes. These are portraits of woman
in their work environment, and some of just the environment itself. They
are not, what you might call, “working images.” The women range from
their teens up to some even in their 70s, and almost none are what you
could even remotely call attractive. In fact most would even turn a
drunk man from ever wanting to go south of the border, but there are
many moving images that will make you take more than a few moments to
think about how your life is, and could have been. At 7x9, with 288 soft
cover pages, it retails for $50-US. It will make a very unique addition
to a personal photo library. Published by GRAPHIS.
These last three books are all available
from
www.watsonguptill.com.
I rate it: B+
(Reviewed Sept. 2004) |
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Nighttime
Digital Photography with Adobe Photoshop CS3
By John Carucci
This book on night photography and the use of Photoshop has easy to follow
lessons and comes with downloadable support files to do the work. It
covers all that a photographer needs to know to capture night images
and then enhance those images with
Photoshop. It covers the use of layers, color correction, perspective
and on to the final output. Considering its small size and
content that is in many other books, I do have a problem with its
high price.
This soft cover book is about 7x9 inches, with 230 pages, retails
for US-$49.99 - and is distributed by Peach Pit Press at:
www.peachpit.com
I Rate it: A- (PF)
(Reviewed October 2007)
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Nikon
Creative Lighting System Digital Field Guide
by J. Dennis Thomas
Digital Nikon users are in for a treat if they now use, or intend to
buy, either the new SB-800 or SB-600 lighting systems. This great
new book covers “everything” you need to use these two units and all
of the power-packed extras that go with them, like the new R1C1
macro speedlight kit. This great new book covers just about every
lighting combination and set up you can think of for any subject you
will likely come across. This is one of those few books that I get
two copies of so that I can take one along into the field and not
care about the wear and tear that it will get. I will also bet that
this book will help sell a lot of these new Nikon creative lighting
systems, and make a lot of happy photographers. (I’ll be one of
them!)
This soft cover book is about 6x9 inches, with 201 pages, retails
for US$19.99 - and is published by Sybex, an imprint of Wiley at
www.sybex.com
I Rate it: A++ (PF)
(Reviewed April 2007) |
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The
Nikon D200 Dbook
By Helmut Kraus, Rudolf Krahn, Rainer Dorau
The first thing you will notice about this book is that it looks
like they forgot to put the pages in it (only has 45 of them), but
that is because the book itself is more like the index for the CD,
which is what the book is really about. That CD is a 580 page
interactive manual for the Nikon D-200 camera. If you bought
one of these cameras, or are about to, here is the first tool that
you should get to go with it. It will probably become your
most important accessory for your camera. (I have the Nikon D-200
and I know that there seems to be controls everywhere you look and I
wouldn’t be surprised if I still haven’t found them all). Here is a
new book/CD that will show you how to take advantage of all your
camera has to offer. You can also check out their web site for
a Dbook created for other camera models.
This hardback book is about 6x9 inches, with 45 pages, retails for
US-$44.95 - and is published by RockyNook and distributed by
O’Reilly Media and can be checked out at:
www.oreilly.com
I Rate it: A+
(Reviewed
Nov. 2007)
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Nikon D-200 Digital Field
Guide
by David D. Busch
Every Nikon D-200 owner will want this new guidebook to really get
the most out of their new camera. It should be called the,
“Complete, Fully-packed Field Guide,” because with this book you
will need no others, and just as importantly, it is just the right
size to fit in a day-pack and take along with you. (It is priced so
low that you could buy a second one just for that.) It is fully
captioned and illustrated, and by fully I mean it includes info that
most other guidebooks do not offer, such as how to use the D-200 to
take digital infrared images.
This soft cover book is about 6x9 inches, with 262 pages, retails
for US$19.99 - and is published by Sybex, an imprint of Wiley at www.sybex.com
I Rate it: A++
(Reviewed Aug. 2006) |
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Nikon D200 DVD Guide
by the experts at Magic Lantern
Guidebooks are the way most people learn about a new product. With
the advent of DVDs, however, this new medium has become a super way to learn
just about anything. With this new DVD, the owners of the new Nikon
D200 can learn about it right from the comfort of a nice easy chair.
Book guides are nice in that you can take them with you, but you
also have the hassle of having to put the camera down every time you
use the book or change the page. With a DVD you can watch and learn
right along with the instructor as you hold and work with your
camera at the same time. This new DVD guide takes you beyond what
you get in camera manuals and also shows you how to take great
images. It is an in-depth guide created for photographers, by
photographers. This is one great and easy way to learn your new
camera inside and out. There are also guides for other camera makes
as well, so check out their site.
This DVD guide is almost 1 and ½ hours long and retails for US$24.95
– and is published by Lark Books and distributed by
www.sterlingpub.com I Rate it: A+
(Reviewed Dec. 2006)
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Northern Lights: The Science, Myth, and
Wonder of Aurora Borealis,
by Calvin Hall & Daryl Pederson
Northern Lights is an
interesting collection of this natural wonder that lights up the
night skies for many in the world. It is not just pictures, either.
The book tells about the science of northern lights, and also the
myths and legends that have been told about them for thousands of
years. I found it interesting to learn that Aristotle and Galileo
were not any closer to being right about their origins than were the
Makah Indians of the Pacific Northwest, and as late as 1910 it was
believed that these lights even touched the ground. There is some
photo info in this book, but this is not a how-to book and what
facts there are mostly deal with the locations where best to shoot.
This soft cover book is 10x9 inches with 128 pages and retails for
US$19.95. Published by Sasquatch Books, it can be ordered at
www.sasquatchbooks.com
I Rate it: A
(Reviewed March 2005)
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Nude Photography Notebook:
Finding Inspiration
The work of Allen Jenkins
by Eddie Ephraums
Most of us have seen the notebooks and sketch pads that painters
keep, but most photographers don’t seem to want to take the time to
do that, but Jenkins is one that does, and for good reason. This
book is filled with notebook pages on model set-ups and images
resulting from those notes. Almost every creative idea is covered
from the planning to the image’s final creative use. This new book
is a great collection of the thought process of a fine art
photographer. You cannot do anything but learn from it.
This hardback book is over 8x10 inches, with 128 pages, retails
for US$45.00 – and is distributed by Trafalgar Square at:
www.trafalgarsquarebooks.com/
I Rate it: A
(Reviewed Sept. 2006)
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Click on the above image to find out current pricing or
to purchase this book from Amazon.com |
NUDES 3
This book has no
author to speak of. It is a published collection of fine art nude photography
from artists around the world, including well known ones like Robert Farber and
others you may, or may not have heard of. There are over 200 fine images in this
10.5 x 14 inch hardback book, very few of which you may have seen before. This
is not a how-to book for shooting the nude, but a top quality collection of fine
art nude photography for your coffee table. Nudes 3 is one of a series of books
of this contemporary art form. If the other two are as good as this one, they
have a winning set for sure. Nudes 3 is published by GRAPHIS,
http://www.graphis.com/bks/bks.subj.ph.EN.html and retails for $70.00-US.
I rate it: A++
(Reviewed Oct. 2004)
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Click on the above image to find out current pricing or
to purchase this book from Amazon.com |
Nudes and Portraits
by Gordon Thye
Another coffee table book of top quality, fine art nude photography is
this one that features the work of the author, a young German photographer.
This is a very good picture book. There is no text about how the images were
made, nor is there any text for anything else, either. It will, however, give you a
lot of new ideas for your own work if you are shooting nudes, and they can even
be ideas for glamour or fashion shots if you are not now doing nudes. At 10 x 13
inches, and 128 pages, this hard back AMPHOTO book is from,
http://www.watsonguptill.com/ and retails for $35.00-US. It will be a very
nice addition to any photo library.
I rate it: A
(Reviewed Oct. 2004)
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Click on the above image to find out current pricing or
to purchase this book from Amazon.com |
Nudes, Developing Style in
Creative Photography,
by Terry Hope.
This 144 page soft cover book, is a fine
collection of the nude works of many well known photographers including
Ralph Gibson, Robert Farber, Bill Brandt, and 18 others. Its 9x10 inch
pages are full of top quality reproductions, and a wealth of personal
information from each photographer as to what went into making their
image. The technical facts like film and equipment are minimal, but you
can get those sorts of books anywhere. Few books take you into the
photographers head like this one does. Retail price is $29.95-US
(Reviewed Aug. 2004) |
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