Digital Wedding Photography: Capturing Beautiful Memories Paperback – August 7, 2006

...because it is so well written.Let me start out by offering kudos to Amazon reviewers. I ordered this book because of its 5 star rating. If I just saw it on the shelf at a bookstore, I dont know if I would have picked it up...and it would have been my loss.Because I keep getting more and more requests to do weddings, I sat down a few days ago and got three books from Amazon, each 5-star rated. I wanted to explore whether weddings are something I dare get into. The other two books I thumbed through, looked at the pics, skimmed a paragraph or chapter when something caught my attention, and kept going.This one I started on this afternoon and read cover to cover...without meaning to!Before you yawn and move on, know that this book is twice as thick as the average Amherst book (and only a tad smaller).First of all, this book is targeted to people like me...folks that have a good working knowledge of SLRs and are either curious or serious about starting to shoot weddings. The book is written in a conversational style without the narrative stuffiness that caused me to put the other two down after thumbing through.I felt like the author was talking to someone on my level, without all the eliteism I run into when mixing in semi- or pro circles.For example, I know that shooting RAW gives more control over images. I know that primes are generally sharper than zooms. I've met purists who proudly snub their noses at JPEG, zooms, or both, speaking of them with the same disgust one might have talking about a cockroach that crosses the floor... or the junior photog in front of them that sheepishly mentions he uses both.I own a couple of primes and will probably buy Photoshop CS2 in the next 12 months. Although its a necessary evil, I dont really enjoy sitting in front of a computer with the image software I have, much less something as complicated as CS2. Rather, Ive tried to spend the last couple of years immersing myself in PHOTOGRAPHY- trying to get the best, most creative images through the lens and into the camera...before all the processing.I never felt second-class while reading this book.This author tells you the "what" to do, but he excels in also telling the "why." A suggestion for certain shots has the requisite photo as an example, but often has other photos demonstrating how differences from that suggestion that affect the final image...usually negatively. This author has little problem "showing" as well as "telling."He gives examples of why RAW is better most of the time, but he freely admits that shooting RAW involves a cost/benefit tradeoff, particularly a solo photog without a studio staff devoted to post-processing. He has no problems with the idea that sometimes JPEG wins that tradeoff for whatever reason. He writes about situations he feels JPEGs work just fine and times where even a JPEG photog needs to shoot RAW if at all possible (for example, shots of a bride in bright sunlight). He shows examples of why he says that. After all that, he then goes into tips to use if you still choose JPEG.Other authors adopt the tone, "If you don't do what I say, you're wasting both our time by reading any further."He talks about how digital has changed the landscape of wedding photography (such as folks like me considering it) and the trends of some photogs to provide digital copies on DVD's instead of keeping negatives and extracting money on prints. Rather than judge or cry about either, he simply deals with it and presents business models that take advantage of each issue either way.The other books have gorgeous pics of gorgeous people getting married in castles, attended by butlers or maids as they get ready, and amazing images of fantasy weddings I doubt I'll ever attend. In fact, my new favorite wedding pic (maybe favorite any pic!) was in one of those books.But I kept coming back to this book to read.Even though I cant count how many photog books Ive read over the past two years, I still learned from this one.I dont know if I will seriously commit to weddings or not.I do know I am a better photog now than I was 8 hours ago...without even picking up a camera.UPDATE 11/07I can agree with one reviewer that the books is probably most helpful to shooters with 0-5 weddings under their belts. I'll add that its also probably most helpful to photogs that have read 0-5 wedding books. As I pointed out, the other books I bought were stuffed with "Photographs!" that dazzle and inspire. Heck, I brought out the other two to thumb through and ogle pics last night. But last week, I broke this one out to read though again.New to wedding photography? Picture books are great for visual inspiration. Amazon is flooded with thin wedding books with purdyful, full-page pics. Heck, if you're reading this you can see what you probably aspire to right now by searching though the top rated wedding photographs in various online galleries such as photo*net or photosig*com. Some of the work there, as with many other books and websites, is distilled, unadulterated Mastery.This book, however, is written as a tutorial for your brain (and wallet) more than an art class for your eye sockets. If this describes your needs, then, a year after purchase, I still offer my recommendation to you.

I am a photographer with a passion and an eye, but not too much technical training and definitely far from what I would consider professional. I usually shoot in automatic mode because I'm not as comfortable in the other modes and the only lens I have is the one that came with my digital SLR. Still, I shot a few weddings years ago and was asked to shoot a friend's sister wedding this coming summer. I decided to use this as an excuse to brush up on my skills and expand my equipment. I wanted to be informed going into the wedding and was especially interested in learning about what sort of equipment I should be considering. I decided to buy this book and the Wedding Photographer's Handbook by Bill Hurter. The books arrived in the same shipment and as I flipped through the books, I immediately could tell that if I had seen both of these in bookstores before I purchased them, I would have probably just purchased this book, "Digital Wedding Photography:..." . It is significantly longer and almost looks like a text book with clearly outlined content. I prepared myself with post-its to mark up important things to refer to as I read the books to reference later.I read the Hunter book first, fairly quickly. It's a lot shorter and while their photos are far superior, offers a more top-level, general introduction to the world of wedding photography. I only placed 3 post-its in this book.Then I read this book by Glen Johnson and discovered that my first impression was spot-on. This book is much more detailed, including information down to the details of a drill you can do to practice getting the perfect shots for the bouquet toss and ideal angles to shoot from for the cake cutting. I used 12 post-its for this book. The actual photography in the book was not as creative as the photos in the Hunter book so I ended up being glad that I got both, although I value the information I received in this book over the inspiration I received from the Hunter book since I could probably find similar inspiration by looking at images online.Overall, this book was exactly what I was looking for. The only area I noticed that there wasn't much detail on was pricing. But I think that was done intentionally since it describes how regional pricing can be and how you should find out what the pricing average is in your area before you set up your own prices. I think the most useful information in this book was details about equipment recommendations and information about touching up photographs. I would have liked to learn more about retouching but the amount of information in here exceeded my expectations and if I need to learn more, I should simply get a book specifically on that topic.