Photography 101

For the beginning enthusiast, there are, of course, classes at the local community college. These past couple of weeks, however, quite a few acquaintances have asked me for tips on the self-study of photography.

For this type of introduction, there are a number of excellent books as well as resources on the web. I used to have these bookmarked, but since my hard drive crashed a few months ago, I had to look these up for them.

Here's my Quick Ten recommendation list:

• Understanding Exposure - The basics of shutter speed and aperture, with many useful examples, rather than boring text
• Learning to See Creatively - Composition. Again rich with illustrative sample photos.
• Luminous Landscape tutorials
• Composition - A collection of good tutorials on this important topic.
• Taking Great Pictures - Helpful basics from Kodak
• Briot's View - Eleven part tutorial on aesthetics and photography.
• Back to Black and White - Excellent NYIP series of tutorials by Bernhard Suess. Although the index list stops at #22, this goes up to #28. Several of the tutorials are on processing and printing. You may ignore these until you become interested in darkroom.
• Spirit of Place - Best book I have read on the subject of travel photography.
• Landscape Photography
• Ultimate Exposure Computer

Once you are acquainted with the basics, the most important thing to remember is to

- SHOOT plenty of pictures. Close and far, landscape and vertical format, from different angles and viewpoints.

- LOOK at plenty of pictures. As much as you can. Photo books, photoblogs, works of the masters, paintings, drawings. See what makes them work.

- have fun!