David Pogue is amazing. The New York Times columnist (his Circuits writing is a fun must-read) has another life as an O’Reilly “Missing Manuals” author. His new Missing Manual on Digital Photography illuminates the sometimes-murky world of taking pictures with digital cameras. Even more important, Pogue sharpens the focus on what to do with the photos once you’re taken them.
Business users can overlook the power of pictures. The Web has become a high-value marketplace with social networks and blogs. Every one of these sites — Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, even free blogs on Blogger — is a marketing tool. And these messages from businesses stand out when they have a graphic element.
You could start with your own picture, and Pogue’s book begins with taking photos. He’s got a clear and illustrated 13-page Taking the Shot section right up front that answers questions of how to frame and shoot. This is all subjective, of course, but adding things like The Rule Guideline of Thirds shows flexibility. And Pogue has his own artistic sensibility, since he was a Broadway musical conductor in a prior career.
The book also covers 10 Decisions to make on camera options, like flash, manual mode, how much exposure. I’ve been taking photos for more than 25 years as a journalist, and Pogue’s advice refreshed me. Every enterprise has access to easier photography tools today. The basics are in this book, but it adds so much more in details, too.From a fun section on camera-buying tips, the book moves through the photography skills and into The Lab, where camera meets computer. Picasa and iPhoto are the primary programs he details, giving both PC and Mac users a chance to learn about free software available online — or in the case of the Mac, right on your computer in iPhoto.
His advice only goes as far as iPhoto 8 in this book, printed in January of ’09. Apple didn’t make iPhoto 9 available until February of this year, but the iPhoto lessons in the book will keep everybody busy. iPhoto has become a deep, rich application. This book lets you dig in for advanced tips, as well as explanations about where photo files go to live and how to get others into the app.
There’s colorful illustrations throughout, really helpful when the book gets into Fixing Photos (straighten, sharpen, fix exposure). You can even learn about saturation and how it can make a picture more vivid.
Best of all, maybe, is the section called The Audience. Editing and shooting may be easier to grasp, because these photo tasks have been around for years. Sharing your photos with the world, like onto that blog on in a Facebook album, is a new option — and probably the most important one to getting more than a fun payoff for your pictures. A 12-page section on Publishing Photos on the Web explains how to get your camera skills working to impress the world.
Being a Missing Manual, the book has a healthy 10-page index and a couple of appendixes, plus lots of links to helpful Web sites. I’ve been in publishing long enough to remember darkroom work and slides. Neither is a part of a modern photo experience, but I wish something like this could be in every business bookcase. We’d have a better picture from the working world. You can, too.
David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual
January 2009, 304 Pages
Series: The Missing Manuals
Retail $24.95; Amazon.com $16.49
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