Good Eductional Resources

CPRich · Apr 23, 07, 10:32 pm

Beginning of a list of valuable educational aids for learning photography. Among the literally hundreds of books, videos, and bookmarks & have, these always come to mind when recommending to a new shooter:

- Understanding Exposure - Bryan Peterson

- Learning to See Creatively - Bryan Peterson

- The Digital Photography Book - Scott Kelby

- Photography and the Art of Seeing: A Visual Perception Workshop for Film and Digital Photography - Freeman Patterson

- Radiantvista.com - video tutorial - excellent step-by-step. The 5-step primer is a must-watch for beginners learning Photoshop (2/20/06) - http://www.radiantvista.com/video_tutorials/

- dpreview.com - discussion of photo gear

- photosig.com - photo critique site. Excellent work and constructive critiques.

- Photoshop and Lightroom books by Scott Kelby

- A great windows-based DOF calculator - http://www.bobatkins.com/photography...ield_calc.html

- Tutorials on Composition, Noise, Waterfalls, Sharpening, Curves/Layers, etc. - http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm

Add your own...

YVRJer · Apr 24, 07, 2:10 am

Great links CPRich.. thanks for sharing.

Here's one I'd like to add:

Jodie Coston's online photography course - http://www.morguefile.com/archive/classroom.php

bdjohns1 · Apr 24, 07, 9:01 am

To get the most out of Photoshop, I'd recommend the following books/sites:

"Photoshop [CS/CS2/CS3] for Photographers" by Martin Evening - Evening is a working fashion photographer, and he covers workflow, post-processing techniques, the basics of Photoshop, etc. very well. Most used PS book I have. I can also recommend "Photoshop CS2 for Digital Photographers Only".

I'll echo CPRich's favorable feedback on Kelby's books - they're maybe a little more user-friendly than Evening's book if you're new to PS, although maybe less comprehensive.

I do not recommend Deke McClelland's "Photoshop CS2 One-on-One" - his style is annoying, and too much of his book focuses on graphics design work, not getting the most out of photos.

If you shoot RAW, then "Real World Camera Raw" by Bruce Fraser is a must-have.

Another couple of websites I recommend:

luminous-landscape.com - focused on landscape photography. The site caters more towards high end gear (digital medium format), but a lot of the discussions of techniques is applicable to any shooter who wants to get better landscapes. Lots of tutorial material on the site, although some of it is getting a bit dated. Still, I swing by there a couple times a month to see what's new. They've got discussion forums there, but they don't see a lot of traffic.

fredmiranda.com - the site's business purpose is to sell Photoshop plugins (and they've got a couple of pretty good ones). However, the discussion forums there are great. Lots of quality posts, and lots of people showing off their work in various areas to give you ideas/inspiration. There are separate forums for landscapes, people photography, macro, sports, weddings, etc, all getting a fair amount of traffic.

strobist.com - this site's more devoted to lighting, but it does it really well. The central idea behind this site is to get your flash off of your camera, opening up more creative possibilities. It's also about doing lighting economically. The site author is a staff photographer for the Baltimore paper. Great articles, and a lively discussion group over at Flickr (and about 15,000 contributed photos).

I'll also vote for CPRich's link to Ron Bigelow's websites.

dizzy · Apr 24, 07, 1:10 pm

If you use GIMP: http://tutorialblog.org/gimp-tutorials/

As a side-note, I really recommend GIMP. It's free, and has a lot of the same functionality as Photoshop. Plus, if you don't like it, you're not out anything but a little time.

winkydink · Apr 24, 07, 3:55 pm

123di was immensely helpful to me in solving specific problems using photoshop (CS and Elements... and Nikon Capture now too). And I believe they have a free trial of the e-book version.

richarddd · Apr 24, 07, 6:58 pm

Outdoor Photographer Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2 (Outdoor Photographers) by Rob Sheppard is very good.

I second luminous-landscape.com. Great site. The tutorials are definitely worth reading.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm

kuroneko · Apr 26, 07, 7:50 am

I found the following ebooks very helpful when I started out with Nikon DSLR. Answers every basic question you might have about optimum camera operation and technique.

--The ebooks by Thom Hogan on DSLR and Flash: http://www.bythom.com/ (great site if you shoot Nikon in general)

--The ebook by Peter Inova and Uwe Stenmueller, "DSLR: Nikon D70" (Inova does versions for other cameras as well)

These ebooks come with photoshop actions and other goodies, some of which I've used a lot.

I'm also a fairly frequent visitor to nikonians.org for tips, reviews, and news about the Nikon world.

bdjohns1 · Apr 26, 07, 10:50 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by kuroneko

--The ebooks by Thom Hogan on DSLR and Flash: http://www.bythom.com/ (great site if you shoot Nikon in general)

I'm also a fairly frequent visitor to nikonians.org for tips, reviews, and news about the Nikon world.

Nikon should just get rid of whoever writes their manuals and let Thom Hogan write them. He's that good.

Nikonians is a decent site, but there's a strong bias towards products sold through the Nikonians store (Markins ballheads) or companies that advertise there (ThinkTank Photo). Plus, every time you post, they have a nag screen asking you to donate money and become a member. Given that I already have a webhost, I don't need their photo galleries, etc.

That said, I do have some Think Tank gear (a belt system) and it's great. Not cheap, but I have a feeling it will last darn near forever.

Telfes · Apr 26, 07, 6:20 pm

Someone who teaches some of our local digital photography classes recently recommended to me http://www.photo.net/ as a good place to get tips, camera reviews, and also critiques of photos you upload.

He also recommended GIMP, as did dizzy.

SeAAttle · Apr 27, 07, 1:23 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by bdjohns1

Nikon should just get rid of whoever writes their manuals and let Thom Hogan write them. He's that good.

Absolutely agree. The D200 Nikon manual is virtually unusable, especially for aging eyes. Thom Hogan's eBook is fantastic and very readable.

Gargoyle · Apr 29, 07, 8:48 pm

Digital camera reviews:

Digital Photography Review http://www.dpreview.com/
Digital Camera Resource http://www.dcresource.com/
Imaging Resource http://www.imaging-resource.com/
Steves Digicams http://www.steves-digicams.com/

Photo training and tutorials:

Luminous Landscape http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials

Photoshop tutorials:

http://www.adobe.com
http://www.lynda.com commercial training video company, but lots of free samples
The National Association of Photoshop Professionals' site http://www.photoshopuser.com; most of the tutorials--text and video--are restricted to members, but some is accessable to non-members

http://www.acecam.com/fotomag3.html Travel newsletters, camera clubs, photography mailing lists. They also have worldwide photo links at http://www.acecam.com/abroad.html

PicScout image tracking service- a paid service to find out if anyone is stealing your copyright images:
http://www.picscout.com/home/index.aspx

blooman · May 1, 07, 5:48 am

Can anyone recommend some good books or web resources on color management and printing?

Also, what magazines do you all subscribe to?

driftings · May 1, 07, 12:26 pm

I completely agree with your first pick: Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. Simple to understand and extremely well done.

kuroneko · May 1, 07, 2:05 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by driftings

I completely agree with your first pick: Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. Simple to understand and extremely well done.

Agreed.

Yes, we all know the basics -aperture, shutter speed, and ISO- and yes, they are simple concepts. You may also wonder why you should read a whole book on the sole topic of exposure.

All I can say is, get this book. You NEED it. If you read this book cover-to-cover, you will look at photography in a whole new way. And the pictures he has are inspiring.

Emma65 · May 19, 07, 8:26 am

Just picked up the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book by Scott Kelby. Just flipped through it and yup - it's well worth the money.

I do consider myself being a fairly advanced computer user. I have been running Lightroom since the first beta came out. Still there is a ton of stuff in there for me to learn and already picked up a few things.

Now I'm going to have less sleep than I already do.

/E