Book Review - Portrait Photography: Secrets of Posing & Lighting

Right off the bat, I liked this book when I read the first chapter about lighting accessories. The author included a great deal of detail on the benefits of all the different flash and lighting options and gave some examples of when they may be best used. The other thing that jumped out at me was all the pictures. Some things I have read will show a picture and explain how they took it and what tool (flash, etc) they used. This book goes a step beyond that and shows examples of too much flash, not enough flash and explains what you are seeing.

Chapter 2 is called Poses and Expressions and is filled with examples of details that amateurs can easily overlook. It is filled with gems like this: "If the head is tilted too far forward, ... the pose becomes submissive." When I read that, I thought about it and realized that is true. More importantly, depending on the goal of the photo, this may be what you want, but for a typical, customer portrait, that is generally not the case and while the average customer may not put it in those words, they will probably feel like that picture is "off" or just say they don't like that one as much as others in the set.

The section on troubleshooting is really useful. It includes how to deal with glare from glasses which presents a real challenge to many photographers. There are also many tips and suggestions for posing people to accentuate or de-emphasize different body features.

I still hope to get a lot of value out of this book as I start doing more portraits, but I already feel like I have learned enough from this book in the first several chapters to make it worth the cost. If you want to give Portrait Photography: Secrets of Posing & Lighting a closer look, head over to Amazon.

This is a book that will be on my bookshelf for a long time. I will certainly be re-reading many parts many times as I work on continuously improving my portrait skills.