Book Review - A Little Inspiration

Books. Aimed to inspire and help create, if ever I'm in a creative rut a quick look through these perks me right up.

As photographers we are always interested in seeing other people work and how they do things, it can leave you with a great feeling of inspirational and desire to get up and go make something happen, in this post I'll be going over a few photography books which really inspire me, so on those days where you just don't get that feeling you can have a flick through and get those creative juices flowing.

For me it's not only just the awesome images that are in these books, but that real people got these made, they went from concept to being on book shelves and sold all over the world, thereby offering inspiration in a slightly different form.

Humans of New York - Brandon Stanton

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll have found it almost impossible to not have heard of HONY, the idea is simple, document the people of New York and tell their stories. this book has some great street portraits in it and the stories alone can set inspiration, but what this book does for me is show how a very simple idea can explode and become something known the world over. 

Photography Q & A - Zack Arias

ack Arias comes at you with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but his advice is honest and true, his 'Ask me anything' blog took off with great success leading to this informative book about the photography industry which is illustrated with great photography and leaves the reader feeling inspired and ready to [in the words of Zack] "Put your hand to the plow and make things happen".

Propaganda, Photographs from Soviet Archives - Mark Holborn & Torsten Nystrom

An odd book here, but a good one, packed full of Soviet era black and white photographs this book is pure photo inspiration, awesome images depicting everything from Siberia to Moscow. I love just flicking through this book for straight up awesome images of a culture which is nothing like what I've lived in.

Best Business Practices for Photographers - John Harrington&

Setting up a Successful Photography Business - Lisa Pritchard

2 Great business books here, I got these when i was first starting out, they are well informed and offer simple advice for setting up, contracts, invoicing, branding, copyright and pricing. these are great to have to hand and while there in a ton of information online its not only hard to get a clear picture but a single place to have a host of information, the only downside to some of the content in these books is that is is american based, so you'll have to do a bit of altering to make it work here in the UK but it's all good.  

Fujifilm X100S, from Snapshots to Great Shots - Kevin Mullins

Kevin Mullins is a UK based documentary photographer and the source of much of my inspiration and knowledge from when I was starting out, his book on the Fuji X100S is a great facet of knowledge for someone wanting to learn more about the awesome X100 series and also just photography skills in general, if you have an X100 grab a copy of this, it will see much more use than the manual that came with the camera thats for sure.

Brick Lane - Phil Maxwell

Street photography inspiration to the max, as a street shooter myself this book gives you a great boost to getting out there and getting images, shot over a number of years and documenting Brick Lane in London this book features some incredible candid photography. One this this book also does is help overcome the fear of shooting street, when you look how intimate, how close and just where and what this book contains it gives you confidence to get out there and shoot it yourself.

Thats all from me this week, hope you enjoyed the post, feel free to share online or follow me up in the usual places.

Cheers,

Col-