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Archive for the ‘Review: Books’ Category

LIDLIPS Lessons I Didn’t Learn in Photo School: Book Review

07 Dec

Lessons I didn't learn in photo school

Monkey Butler Reviews LIDLIPS

Awesome name. LIDLIPS.

I am not a “traditionally” trained photographer. I have spent maybe 10 hours in a darkroom and never owned a ‘real’ film SLR. Video was my first love anyways, it was only two years ago that I started shooting professionally. This lead me to think ‘am I missing something that other photographers got at photography school?’ Read tons of books on the subject, from theory to functionality. I spend a ton of hours working with the camera in the field, but never taught by a master. Looking up specialty schools you will find no shortage of people saying, ‘full sail didn’t provide me with the skills I needed’ or ‘save your money from x,y,z and invest into gear’.




Well, Syl Arena DID go to a ‘photography’ school, and instead of complaining about it’s short falls, he wrote this book. LIDLIPS is SHORT. I mean REALLY short. But it’s not meant to be burned through on a lunch hour break. The way I approached it was reading 1-3 LIDLIPS a day and reflecting on them. It truly is a book to keep handy to get a quick dose of inspiration!




Wish it was 1,001 Lessons, but that’s the only ‘con’ but at $0.15 per nugget of wisdom, I can’t knock it. 5 out of 5 from the Monkey Butler.

 
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Book Review: The Photographer’s Eye

12 Nov

The Photographer’s Eye, by Michael Freeman

“The Photographer’s Eye shows how anyone can develop the ability to see and shoot great digital photographs.” This is written on the back cover and most accurately describes this book.

Written more like a reference manual than a 1-on-1 author to reader relationship, this book takes major components of photography and break them down in 2-4 pages of detailed description. I particularly enjoyed the graphics that displayed eye movement or motion for a corresponding photograph. While I did not always agree that the suggested paths were the ‘normal’ views, it was cleverly displayed.

You will not know how to work your camera better or have any new tricks to try in Photoshop or Lightroom after reading this book. Instead you will capture better photographs… your composition will improve, and the depth of the photograph.

One of my favorite parts came from the Chapter 5: Intent intro, “…This is actually one of the central problems in photography-overcoming the sheer mindless ease of taking a picture. The problem is compounded by the evidence that occasionally a strong image can result from no intention…”

Another very helpful and educational section is the case study: Japanese Monk (page 160-161). Properly illustrated and easy to read, Michael Freeman walks you through the process of capturing a moment. The addition of a time-line in seconds was great!

Overall this book would make a very nice college level Photography basics book. It’s like a text book but doesn’t feel too ‘text-booky’. Overall I give it a 4 throwing stars out of 5.

 
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Your Money. The Missing Manual. Book Review

07 Nov
Book Review

Your Money the Missing Manual book review

Your Money. The Missing Manual. by J.D. Roth

Your Money, The Missing Manual could have been titled Your Money, the missing research project. Or Basic Money for Dummies. In other words, it’s extremely basic and overwhelmingly full of references/links/ and advertisements for other books.

The filling of a Wikipedia page is undeniable. Illustrating this to my wife I flipped to random pages and found multiple external AND internal references. Some internal references are literally saying “see page x for more details” where x is the NEXT PAGE. Some might see this as magnifying the value of the book, personally, it’s not for me.

Being a basic book it is written in clear English and anyone with a Jr. High level of education should have no problem breezing through. This is a pro. Money is a complex issue, being able to communicate complex ideas in a simple manor is not always easy.

For all its simplicity, the book has a few great nuggets of inspiration. Telling the difference between credit reports and credit scores… explaining some need to know information regarding those ‘free credit reports’ you see advertised everywhere. Good vacation information for saving money. Do you understand how the marginal tax rates work? You will after reading this book (and it’s good information to have!). Most of the book has well defined bolded text at the beginning of paragraphs that will let you know to skip it or read it.

Personally, I am confident in my financial knowledge and comfortable with my cash flow. I have minimum debt and contribute to multiple retirement plans. This book is not for me. Who is it for? I would love to see freshmen in high-school be assigned this book. People who are in debt and are looking for a good start to start digging out, this book is worth the $20.

So for me, it’s a 3 Star but for the young crowd and in debt (or slipping into debt crowd) I’d give it a 4 Star. Therefore I’ll average the two and say Monkey Butler Ninja will budget 3.5 expense slashing ninja stars!

 
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Slide:ology By Nancy Duarte, book review

01 Oct

Slide:ology By Nancy Duarte
Slide:ology; The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
I appreciated the way this book is laid out. I love the pacing, the typography, the visual aids and most of all the content. It makes sense that a book about presentations is presented well, but Nancy Duarte goes the extra mile and hits a grand slam with Slide:ology!

The case studies are perfectly relevant and efficient teaching aids for the reader. You decide if this is a pro or con but there are a LOT of case studies in this book.

As someone that works with a business that uses PowerPoint for nearly EVERYTHING this book armed me with a few other tools to help guide the “higher-ups” to a more successful design.



Chapter 3, Creating Diagrams is particularly strong as it helps expand your concepts of diagramming all sorts of different concepts. Hundreds of simple thumbnails to get you started; or use as is for an end state.

Chapter 12, which hardly could be classified as a chapter, is Manifesto: The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation. SHORT, and AWESOME.
Bottom line: this book takes an everyday presenter and transforms them into a designer! The world would be a better place if everyone that was ever going to make a PowerPoint presentation sat down and read through this book FIRST!

Monkeybutlerninja gives slide:ology 5 ‘power point’ ninja stars!

 
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Photography in 100 Words by David Clark

30 Mar

Photography in 100 WordsPhotography in 100 Words is a charming collection of outstanding photographs. Fifty fantastic pieces of art by fifty different photographers. Each spread has one of the artist’s pieces on the right and a write up on the left.

Imagine getting into an elevator, right behind you follows a famous professional photographer who happens to have one piece you absolutely love. A conversation then follows about that piece, then the elevator reaches the floor and the two of you part ways.

This book will take you on that elevator ride with 50 photographers.

I’m not sure how if it was David Clark or the Focal Press team who is responsible for the layout of this book, but they deserve to be recognized for their work. It’s clean, it flows, it is sharp. I question the shrink wrapped decision but the book being a short read may have something to do with it.

Who is this book for? After reading through it, I’d say it will make a nice coffee table book in a studio. Certainly one I am proud to have in my collection.

I wouldn’t call this suggestion a critique, and barely a suggestion at that. More of a curiosity of how this book would have been if, instead of one picture and one short write up, we would have had a series of four or five photographs. Certainly not 50 different photographers in this case, but it probably would have drawn me in to a more personable connection, and not the elevator encounter.

Monkey Butler Ninja gives Photography in 100 Words 4 ninja stars out of 5.

 
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Book Review: The Portrait – Understanding Portrait Photography

12 Mar

Monkey Butler Ninja reviews The PortraitThe Portrait: Understanding Portrait Photography is a book void of all personality, which is ironic, considering how ‘personable’ the process of portraiture is. I would rate The Portrait a shade less robotic than an actual manual. I could be a bit harsh because the previous few books had obvious emotion infused into the chapters.

Poor layout of the book shocked me almost as much. Photography is a visual medium, how does a book get published with such poor attention to detail.

Not all is bad and lost in this book. There are some beautiful examples of photographer’s work, nice mathematical breakdowns of complex subjects and a fantastic series of examples for moving lights.

Pros:

Chapter 2 had fantastic examples of different lighting techniques and results they yield.

Early in Chapter 5 the authors describe exposure in mathematical formula that helps simplify the important task! Page 69 in particular is cram-packed with goodness.

The posing chapter is a good read. I found lots of helpful information here, some basic, some complex.

Cons:

The “very brief history” seemed to drag on and on. I’m not a huge history buff but it took a lot to get through these 24 pages (roughly 13% of the entire book).

As early as chapter 2 there are multiple times a sentence gets cut off by the end of the page and does not continue for MULTIPLE pages later! Example: The last sentence on page 34 gets clipped and does not continue until page 40! Six pages! And intensifying this problem was that I wanted to spend time on those six pages.

Some parts mention a method and stop there. No clear instructions/suggestions. Page 72 mentions substituting a gray card for metering exposures, but that’s it. Another example of this con is in the ‘facial analyses’ section. The authors mention how glasses can be a bit tricky but offer no insight to handle the situation.

That all being said, I have to say this book can be skipped. The lack of emotion, distracting layout, and overall ‘manual-feel’ is not enough to overtake the pro’s.

Monkey Butler Ninja gives The Portrait by Glenn Rand and Tim Meyer 2 out of 5 stars.

The layout of this book needs a serious overhaul. Perhaps an additional editor with some layout and design skills.

 
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Book Review: Presentation ZEN Design by Garr Reynolds

20 Feb
Presentation Zen Design by Garr Reynolds

Presentation Zen Design by Garr Reynolds

Who is this book for? Is it the same for the Designer working at Apple versus a high school student. Not really.

Therefore, if you have NOT been formally trained in visual arts or you are one of those ‘self-taught’ AND you use PowerPoint (or Keynote) then absolutely 5 stars on this book. It is written for YOU!

If you do have some artistic or designer training you will find this book on the beginner side. The sub title on the cover actually addresses this, “Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations.”

Pros:

  1. Garr Reynaolds has immersed himself in Japanese culture, which has obviously contributed heavily to his design teachings and principles. If you are going to pick a culture, Japan’s is a good choice.
  2. His points are VERY clear (imagine that) and supported by plenty of nice examples.
  3. An abundance of slide examples accurately reinforce points made in the text.
  4. The layout of the book is pretty pleasing in my humble opinion. Maybe a tad to much white-space, but then again, he is the expert.
  5. FAST read that is written efficiently and leaves you retaining the knowledge you acquired.

Cons:

  1. The book fails to communicate one message. It makes it appear as if PowerPoint has NO place in design, but then later in the book the message then seems to counter that. I caught myself actually saying, “OK, I’m not suppose to use PowerPoint, got it… then what do I use?” But I think THIS is the message: PowerPoint is a presentation tool. And in the hands of someone with good design principles and technique, it can be a powerful tool.
  2. Tooooo Japanese. Nothing is wrong with the culture and the examples are very nice. But at times some of the book felt like a tourism brochure. Slight, slight con in my opinion
  3. While so many good examples populate this book, the “slide examples” chapter left me rather disappointed. Some were nice, but most just didn’t do it for me.

Neither Pro or Con:

    As a rookie photographer I have been introduced to the micro stock debate. If that has any meaning to you then you should know iStockPhoto is a huge contributor to this book… even the cover is a photo from iStockPhoto. I have mixed feelings about the debate. On one hand iStock is a great service for this books target audience, on the other, how much was paid to the photographer for the COVER photograph of a book?

Summary:

    This is absolutely a book you can read from cover to cover. It builds on previous lessons fluently. The delivery is done so in a simple, yet powerful manor. I consider myself a decent “designer” and good “graphics-guy” that can say with certainty this book has enhanced my presentation practices.

Recap:

    If you = are an artist; formally trained; use Flash instead of PowerPoint/Keynote = PASS on the book, 2 of 5 stars.

    If ANY of the following describe you: open PowerPoint fairly often; use clip art; think more color and fonts the better; feel like you need a better handle on design = BUY IT TODAY! 5 of 5 stars.

Monkey Butler Ninja Rating:

    Since the book clearly says it on the cover “Simple Design Principles and Techniques…” it should not miss its target audience, therefore the Monkey Butler Ninja says 5 ninja stars out of 5!
 
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Book Review: Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig

27 Jan

Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig

What an interesting book!

A little about me, I’m a long time professional videographer and hobbyist photographer. Recently (4months ago) I began offering photography as part of my freelance services. I understand my DSLR and am gaining experience.

So, that’s me as a photographer, what did I feel about this book?

The bulk of the content is random short SHORT essays. It seems that Chris Orwig is a great teacher and has written down some of his better philosophical speeches/pitches. Collected all those notes organized them into a few categories, slapped a name on those categories and called them chapters. There isn’t a lot of continuity stringing one essay to the next. In fact, if the traditional chapter structure was yanked out of the book it would work just the same.

An overwhelming pro of this style of writing is you can just pick it up and go! Comparable to the Art of War, or the book of Psalms. Lots of great short sections of knowledge. I was reading this book and listening to the audio book for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People at the same time. If you are familiar with this book, you will find it actually has a lot of things in common and Visual Poetry could be the 7-habbits version FOR photographers.

The book teaches you how to approach photography in a meaningful, philosophical, poetic way. NOT a technical way. If you are looking for details in the technical aspect, skip this book.

Making up for the absences of technical instruction is the ‘Workshop Assignments.’ These are a REAL gem. Mimicking a classroom structure Orwig gives you an assignment with multiple levels to complete. In this section is also a hefty amount of resources (with short descriptions) and sharing instructions (well, suggestions if you DON’T approach this as a classroom setup).

I have probably half a dozen post-it notes sticking out of this book, marking sections to revisit. Nearly all of them are the Workshop Assignments that I plan to fulfill. I believe these are the tools that will actually improve your product. The rest of the book improves your approach.

Chris Orwig interviews a couple professional photographers at the conclusion of the chapters, titled ‘guest speakers.’ He highlight’s their accomplishments and skill sets, then proceeds to ask them questions that I’m sure we ALL would love to ask.

Who is this book for?
1. The person that is JUST starting out and understand the basic technical side of their camera.
2. The pro photographer that is in a bit of a rut and could use some inspiration.

If you are one of the two people above, I’d rate Visual Poetry 4 out of 5 stars! The only reason a star is missing is because of the lack of technical instruction, not just actual photography but the ‘business section’ could have had the chapter renamed to something like ‘thoughts on business’ because there was VERY little content there. Overall great job Chris and thank you for the insight!

 
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Book Review: The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography: Creating a more profitable and fulfilling business.

09 Dec

The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography: Creating a more profitable and fulfilling business. By Damien Lovegrove

Over the past few months I have dedicated a portion of my efforts to Photography, customers seeking a range from baby portraits to weddings. I am a firm believer in the development of your trade, and to walk the walk I grabbed a few books on Photography.

The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography is a stunning book. It is a wide format and hardcover, which makes it stand out from my recent books. Choosing these features screams ‘I care about quality!’ And all it takes is to thumb through a few of the pictures to realize not only does Damien Lovegrove care about quality, he executes.

Stunning photographs populate every page and all are accompanied by some information. Some examples are f-stop, exposure and ISO; then a couple of lines telling you about the photo.

I found myself wanting more, just as the saying goes, ‘Give someone and inch.’ On the photographs about halfway through I started wondering what specific lens was used, what were the settings on the flash. This is not a technical manual however. Another situation I was left wanting more was a point where Lovegrove mentioned a specific style he uses *I believe it was for the first dance* but did not show an example or describe it.

The book is a fairly quick read, mainly due to the abundance of photographs. I do challenge readers to take their time flipping through. Study and see what makes a photograph a piece of art. Lovegrove will be there along the way pointing details and strategies out for you.

Towards the end, the book discusses branding and gives examples on what I consider a mammoth scale that I really would imagine only the top 1% of photographers gets to. It’s nice to see this in the book but wonder if that was executed in an efficient matter. The section (earlier) that discusses goals was a real gem! This example, which was similar, can be applied to everyone.

Over all I’d give this a 4.5 out of 5! So since Amazon doesn’t let a technical monkey like me put in percentages, I will round up. Great book Damien Lovegrove. Photographers; Go out and get it today!

 
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Book Review: How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4

02 Sep

How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4 By Chris Georgenes

Know enough about Flash to be dangerous? Would you like to pull back the curtain on some common applications of Flash? I suggest taking a look at Chris Georgenes’ book, How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4.

There are common elements that span across multiple websites that we mere mortal monkeys do not know how to create. If you ever found yourself sitting in a tree, eating a banana while browsing the web and thought, ‘I’d like to have an effect like that on my site’ but don’t want to spend years learning Flash… this book is for you.

Not a typical reference manual, or cookbook, but it shares elements of both styles. The layout of the book is in a fashion so the user can just open it up and see from start to finish the steps to create an effect, without turning the page! Talk about summing up the important stuff! I know what you are thinking my fellow primates, but rest assured this book is not jam packed with 5 point font from edge to edge. On the contrary, it is beautifully illustrated with graphics that change in style every so often.

This book is for the majority a tutorial book. These two pages here teach you how to do this. Next two pages teach you how to do that. I am not a fan of reference manuals or cookbooks. The cleaver layout did make this book much MUCH more helpful (not to mention an easier read). Chris does go over technique in chapter one, which I really enjoyed and wished there was more of. Technique and style are timeless; the tools will continue to get upgraded.

I think we all know that monkey… he’s the one that just ‘knows’ his stuff. Always seems to be one branch ahead of the rest of us. And we continue to find ourselves tapping him on the shoulder and asking, ‘Hey could you help me create (fill in the HUGE blank here) real fast?’ Well, that monkey is Chris Georgenes (don’t take offense my friend) and this book is what he wrote to show the world some of those creation processes!

Early in the book I got a feeling that really didn’t leave me. This book seems to be aimed more towards the artist. If you are an artist I HIGHLY recommend this book. If you don’t consider yourself an artist and just want to get into web design… check out this book from a Library to see if you want to purchase it. Myself, I don’t consider myself an artist but have a handful of post-it notes sticking out of the pages I want to revisit.

The interludes at the end of each chapter were a really nice touch. These little gems enhance the feeling that you know the guy. Short, sweet, and often entertaining.

Overall well done book! Again, HIGHLY recommend if you are a traditional artist looking to get into Flash. For everyone else, MonkeyButlerNinja gives this book 4 tweening ninja stars out of 5!

 
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