Best Photography Ebooks

I love photography books, I have many, mostly monographs by specific photographers but I also have a few ‘how to do it’ books. The trouble with the latter is that once you have mastered what is on offer the book is a bit redundant. The cost is part of this concern but also that any book published this week was probably written 2 years ago and in the days of digital everything moves more quickly than that.

I have bought ebooks since they were first available, I really like take instruction in this way, I find the quality of reproduction a joy and if you manage to hit upon a series or writer you like and trust then even buying a number of books costs next to nothing.

I am a great advocate of the Craft & Vision ebooks, these cover technical and visual matters in clear and well presented publications and cost only about £3.25, at that price I feel it is worth taking a chance but I have to say I have never been disappointed by a Craft & Vision ebook. Have a look at what they have here

Here are some of their ebooks

Making the Print  Printing Techniques For the Digital Photographer (A Masterclass) Martin Bailey

Beyond Thirds A Photographer’s Introduction to Creative Composition Andrew S. Gibson

Up Close A Guide to Macro & Up Close Photography Andrew S. Gibson

Close To Home Finding Great Photographs in Your Own Backyard Stuart Sipahigil

Vision is Better Free the Mind, Free the Camera David duChemin

See the full catalogue of ebooks here, remember they are only £3.25 each or cheaper if you buy 5 or more

Blurb Books – The Photo book

I can’t believe you do not know about photobooks, they have been around for a few years now and the quality and range keeps improving. I have made books using different suppliers for a number of years. My first was an iphoto book, later I tried a Photobox book, then an Aperture book and recently YourPhotobooks. I have moved around with suppliers to get an idea of the quality they produce and the ease of book assembly. This week I completed a second book on my trip to Laos over Christmas and the new year and this time I went for Blurb Books. It is possible these are the market leaders although I am not sure how you could work that out. Their overall quality is excellent and their technical sophistication, explaining colour space, providing icc profiles etc far exceeds those of the other suppliers I have tried.

Blurb Books a photography book by Keith Barnes about Laos

If you are interested to look inside my book click on the cover and it will take you to the Blurb site where you can preview it’s content.

I decided to go for the largest size available and as I had shot rather a lot of images whilst away it has a lot of pages. I tried using the templates for pages supplied but found this didn’t suit the layout I wanted. One of the very nice things about Blurb is that you can create your own page templates and save them so it is possible to define something unique to your purpose. Not only do you have choice of book sizes but also cover types, hard or soft back, wrap around or dust jacket, there are about 5 different paper types you can select also. This really is as close to a bespoke service as you could want.

The cost reflects the service, I always budget about £1 a page for an A4 photobook, this is pretty cheap if you think you can get several images per page. I probably have about 200 images in my Laos book and even at the cost of £70 for the 150 pages that is still only about 40p per image and many are full A4 in size. I decided not to try to make a profit on my book but Blurb allows you to set your own price and make profit on the difference when someone buys it. You can also put your books in their library for the world to peruse and choose to buy if they like your work.

Why am I telling you about this, well I have always thought of photography as something that has a point when it becomes physical. Viewing on screen on line is OK but if you want to collect your work into something that actually reflects your portfolio then prints or books are a must. You will be surprised at the reaction from family and friends when you show them a book(s) of your work and you will always have something to hand to show, no need to boot up the computer.

 

Photobooks – affordable collectibles that are soaring in value

Rare editions now sell for tens of thousands, but collectors on a limited budget can invest in emerging photographers byAdam Dewar at The Guardian

This is a very interesting article about owning and collecting photobooks. I do think books should be looked at rather than kept in plastic sleeves and never handled simply because they will increase to greater values if un-blemished but it is nice to know that treasured books will have some value in the future even if I never realise the profit.

“At first glance they may look like overpriced coffee-table books, but photobooks are highly collectible works of art. In recent years, a boom in the market has seen prices skyrocket. At a dedicated auction at Christie’s in London last year, signed early editions of influential photobooks such as Robert Frank‘s The Americans and Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s The Decisive Moment sold for £43,250 and £13,750 respectively.”.………..more