Chuffy said:
Ok. I'm trying to build up a portfolio of magazine articles. For this I need to be able to supply pictures. I've bumbled by in the articles that I've written so far but that's not really good enough (for me anyway). I want to be able to take killer snaps like Steve Thomas does in C+.
I have a decent (I think) digital camera. Fuji Finepix S9600.
I don't like or have any interest in photography. It's just a tool that I need to master in order to do a job.
Can anyone recommend a nice simple book?
Aw shucks
I can't recommend a specific book, though for you I would copy the pictures you like and 'deconstruct' them - how were they taken? What was the angle? How would you do something similar? Sites such as Flickr are very good for seeing what other people are doing - most people are pretty nice on there and if you message them asking them how they did certain shots they are usually very helpful and informative.
Sounds like you have a nice and versatile camera - I would start experimenting with the manual mode as soon as possible, it really does give you more power and control over your pics. If you don't know the basics perhaps a book would be good for this in teaching you the theory behind aperture, shutter speed, exposure comp, white balance etc.
Also, if your camera has a RAW function, Shoot RAW, it gives you a lot of control and can also recover shots (too dark, too light etc) that would not be savable if you shot in JPEG. RAW takes up much more space on a memory card but memory is cheap as chips these days so is not a prob.
Two programs I would recommend using over any others for your photos would be Adobe Photoshop (or Photoshop elements which has most of the usability for a fraction of the price) and Adobe lightroom which is great for processing your pictures and doing quick modifications etc. Also, if you import RAW into lightroom you have your RAW files there forever and can tweak them over and over again without losing any information (they act pretty much like an old-skool photo negative)
Hope this helps, I'm by no means an expert and, as said, a good book will teach you the basics but there really is no substitute for getting out there and taking lots and lots and lots of pics (I expect a shoot/use ratio of around 80/1 when I'm taking pics) and experimenting at every turn - you'll soon find what works for you and what doesn't.