Summer Reading List
**Ted Forbes' Art of Photography Summer Reading List: A Comprehensive Guide**
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### Introduction to the Summer Reading List
Welcome back to the Art of Photography Vlog Edition! Today, Ted Forbes shares his curated summer reading list. Known for his engaging style and wealth of knowledge, Ted has compiled a list that spans productivity, creativity, photography techniques, and business aspects. Whether you're on vacation or looking to enhance your skills, this guide is perfect for dipping into during your free time.
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### Productivity Books: GTD and The Now Habit
Ted kicks off with productivity, emphasizing the importance of efficiency in creative work. He highly recommends "Getting Things Done (GTD)" by David Allen, a system that helps stay organized without stifling creativity. Ted has found GTD particularly effective, especially when life gets busy.
Another must-read is "The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore. This book addresses procrastination, offering insights into how to stay productive and overcome laziness. It's a valuable resource for anyone struggling with time management.
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### Creativity and Art Books: The Creative Habit, The War of Art, and More
For those seeking inspiration in creativity, Ted suggests "The Creative Habit" by Twyla Tharp and "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. These books delve into overcoming creative challenges and treating art as a disciplined craft.
Seth Godin's works, including "The Dip" and "Poke the Box," are also featured. These short reads provide practical advice on navigating creative processes and fostering innovation.
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### Photography Techniques and Monographs
Ted emphasizes learning from master photographers with John Blakemore's "Black and White Photography Workshop." This book offers a comprehensive understanding of the zone system, crucial for both film and digital photography. It's a must-have for any photographer's library.
Ansel Adams' trilogy—"The Camera," "The Negative," and "The Print"—is another essential set. Though lengthy, these books provide deep insights into black and white photography techniques, making them invaluable references.
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### Business Aspects for Photographers
For those looking to monetize their craft, John Harrington's "Best Business Practices for Photographers" is a go-to guide. It covers everything from contracts to self-promotion, making it indispensable for aspiring photographer entrepreneurs.
David D'Arcy’s "Visionmongers" is another excellent read, blending business and artistry. It offers practical advice on building a successful photography career while staying true to your creative vision.
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### Photography Legends and Their Works
Ted pays homage to legendary photographers like Robert Frank, Cartier-Bresson, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Their monographs are recommended for their artistic depth and historical significance. These books provide insights into their methodologies and legacies.
Don’t miss "The Americans" by Robert Frank, a seminal work offering a unique perspective on American culture through photography.
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### Current Photographers and Their Contributions
Ted highlights contemporary photographers like Abelardo Morel, known for his camera obscura work, and Keith Carter, celebrated for his innovative techniques. Their monographs are praised for their technical mastery and artistic vision.
Michael Kenna’s books showcase his stunning black and white landscapes, while Joseph Sudek’s works offer a glimpse into the Czechoslovakian master's unique style.
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### Reflections on the Book Industry
Ted concludes with reflections on the current state of the book industry. He laments the decline of physical bookstores like Borders but remains optimistic about the value of printed books as collectibles and investments. He encourages supporting authors by purchasing through affiliate links, which help sustain his podcast.
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This summer reading list, compiled by Ted Forbes, offers a blend of practical advice, creative inspiration, and historical insights for photographers at all stages. Whether you're looking to enhance your productivity, deepen your artistic skills, or explore the works of photography legends, this guide has something for everyone. Happy reading!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody Ted Forbes here welcome back to the Art of Photography Vlog Edition today we are talking about the summer reading list um I'm trying to take a tone here that's very serious and academic um I've obviously very liberated since I quit my teaching job and uh should have dug out my old mortarboard from graduation to do this episode anyway I had an idea um that I would throw together that I think um I think there's a little bit of weight to this and it's something I kind of want to see some stuff collected um over the last couple years that I've been doing these shows since 20 8 there are off and on times that I recommend books um sometimes I've thought or I've talked more of um things like productivity and stuff like that and I thought it would be cool to put together a summer reading list uh people tend to have a little more time when they go on vacation during the summer um especially now that uh you probably have an iPad or Kindle that you read on and I thought it would be fun to compile a list of summer reading stuff and I've got these divided into some sections I'm going to put a link below uh you can check it out in the show notes um I I will be up front and saying that uh you know I'm using affiliate linking on here so if you like the podcast and you want to support it you are more than welcome to click on any of these links if you decide to buy one of these off of Amazon or you can go get them somewhere else it's up to you um but anyway it does help the show um so disclaimer there but I really did want to put together a list of stuff um and there's a lot of things I've been talking about recently in this um and I kind of want to go through the list a little bit so you know if you click on the link and open it a new window you can kind of look through with me um as you're you're watching this if you're on a computer um a couple things I wanted to do were productivity books and there are two I'm I'm kind of funny with productivity books because you know it's called productivity porn in the business but uh it's real easy to start reading about being efficient and not actually being efficient but there's two that I really recommend that helped me out a long time ago um a couple months ago I did an episode called GTD for photographers and if you haven't seen it you can check it out uh GTD I'll briefly explain is a method uh that gentleman named David Allen came up with a couple years ago I'm a big proponent of GTD and I plan on doing more episodes talking about how GTD which is a system of becoming organized with your day-to-day stuff how creativity can fit into that in a non- stifling way because I think that's kind of a challenge uh when we come up with productivity and to-do lists um being creative and doing creative work uh is not a checklist on an item it's more complicated than that and so you know if you want to Bone up on that before we get into some more that uh getting things done is a wonderful book highly recommend it um It's a Wonderful system it's it I've heard people describe as a complex system and it's not the reason I like it and I've done all the productivity systems Franklin cvy uh you know way back in the day and GTD or stands for getting things done reason I like it so much is because I tend to fall off the wagon we all do we get busy it's triage we're just trying to get a project done or a deadline or work fires up or you have a family thing or you know and you're just whatever you got to do to get done so we tend to fall off the wagon it's really easy to get back on the wagon with with GTD uh we'll talk about that in some future episodes another interesting note on that one of our um a gentleman named Lewis who is a uh a senior employee at a very well-known tech company um Lewis actually hooked me up with David Allen and I mean talk about you could have knocked me over with a feather the day I got an email from David Allen was a couple weeks ago after leis set that up and special thanks to LS for doing that he's he's a totally cool guy and I'm actually doing an interview with David Allen for David Allen's podcast and the name may not be much to you if you're not into GTD but this is a guy New York Times bestselling author I mean in GTD changed my life so much a couple years ago U it was really bizarre to get that invitation in a very cool way and so special thanks to Lewis for for hooking that up but anyway it's for David Allen GTD connect which is a podcast that's available on his subscription series and I'm very nervous about it trying to prepare and very excited all at the same time because I think it's going to be really cool because we're going to talk about creativity and a lot of that kind of stuff and so I will bring that to the podcast as well um anyway I said a lot about GTD I'm not going to do that with every book on this list um but I really think it it it is worth selling on you um I have an audio copy I have a hard copy and I keep a copy on my iPad and I refer to them constantly so it really was a life changer for me the only other productivity book that I've really found that made a difference for me is a book called The now habit and if you're like me uh I have a big problem with procrastination sometimes it's like you get lazy I just uh have other things to do uh prioritization off whatever um but I tend to procrastinate sometimes which is odd to say because I've been actually getting these podcasts out pretty regularly but I used to have a big problem with it and there's a book called The now habit written by Neil fiori who is a psychologist and also a hypnotist which is bizarre but it's a really good book that explores a lot of the reasons we procrastinate and kind of suggests some things that you can do to kind of I hate the word life hack but some things you can do to make adjustments in your own schedule and your own Groove that that help get things done better so they're really good combination of books um there's some others that I want to recommend as far as creativity and art go and uh get a lot of requests for you know hey you know uh what do you recommend in this area there's a couple books here U that I recommend um the first one being the creative habit by Twi Tharp it's very good um it's probably largely ghost written but it there's some really wonderful stuff in there um get it it's it's incredible I'm actually um in the middle of that right now couple that I have finished years ago that I really recommend and love the war of art by Steven pressfield is excellent It's kind of written um you know the Art of War the famous uh Japanese uh treaties on learning who your enemy is and all that which people still read today uh he wrote a kind of a little bit of a take on that called The War of art which talks about being creative and and and treating art like work and you're you know getting to it and I hate to use the phrase getting things done over and over but that's what it is is is being productive and in in Creative work which is very difficult uh there's a couple Seth Goden books that I have on here the dip is one I've talked about a lot before if you listen to the podcast I did with Wade Griffith um the audio thing that we did which is which is unfortunately no longer available but I'm working on getting those back out but anyway we talked about the dip a lot the dip is just you know the Journey of being creative and how there's some frustrations and some trials that come along during that process that uh and how to kind of lean into it and learn how to use that to your advantage uh the dip is very good if it's the dip applies to anything it could be a career um not necessarily in necessarily in the Arts it could be a career in the corporate world or it can be just you know with most of you guys who watch the show you know just even if you're not looking at making a career out of it I mean just the progress of becoming a great photographer and it gets frustrating sometimes you feel like you're not any good you don't know what you're doing you'll never be able to do it and generally I won't spoil the whole book it's it's a short book it's an easy read uh but it deals with that and and the whole notion of um you know learning that this is part of the process everybody goes through it and it's called the dip and how you come out of that dip and become successful one day um another one that I haven't read yet but it is free if you have a Kindle or if you have an iPad um called poke the box it's another Seth Goden book uh I threw it on there just because Seth is so good I've read oh gosh a ton of books that he's done uh tribes was an excellent one um I'm trying to keep these kind of applicable to creative stuff and photography um and so I I put po the Box on there because it's it's uh it's very inexpensive um anyway some other ones that I recommend the John blakemore's black and white photography Workshop is one of my favorite books of all time if you're interested in dark room work or shooting film any any of that stuff John Blakemore is a genius uh British photographer and teacher wonderful examples of photos in the book If you if you really want a comprehensive easy way to practically understand the zone system and how to put it to work the zone system was anel Adam's method uh John Blakemore does it um and it's way better than any of the other anel atams even I hate to say and its own system books because it really shows you and digs in uh how this is done what effects you can get out of it um what you want to bring to a print um even if you don't print in a dark if you're just printing on your computer I think there's a lot of really gold information in there just to understand about exposure uh black and white lowkey high key all that stuff um I've recommended that book over and over and over again it's not expensive you can get as a paperback it's the one Photography book that I purchased years ago that I still refer to all the time uh I can't recommend it enough so it's John Blakemore uh his John blakemore's black and white photography Workshop couple others uh if you're going to get into film you're going to get into zone system stuff like that uh the the the three anel Adams books they're kind of fun to own anyway and I think they're kind of must haves for any photographer particularly if you do film um and the three books if you don't know what they are they're the camera the negative and the print uh you should check them out um each one of them deals with each subject on its own uh some of the information deals with older technology and anel oh I don't want to say he was a bad writer but he Rambles on and on and he makes it more confusing than it needs to be um I think John Blakemore cleans that up but I do have all three of the anel um books and I keep those as reference uh even those even some of the developer Technologies is a little bit dated too now but anyway moving on to business stuff um there's a couple books that I recommend and I've noticed that some of these like 3- week weights I don't know if they're out of print or not there's John Harrington's best business practices for photographers which is really if you want to do photography as a business it's really kind of the Bible on how all that stuff works uh everything from contracts to self-promotion to whatever it is um it's it's essential so if you were going into business as a photographer you need to have it it's it's really good and it's up to date it's current it's only a couple years old another one is uh David duan's Vision mongers which is excellent too when he talks about developing his own photography career and kind of how that was done and it's done in a way where it's not just business um it's done in a very Artful way he talks about becoming better as a photographer and how to really make your art your cell point and uh again great book I read that a couple years ago I love it uh I threw in the anel Adams biography or the autobiography just cuz it's fun to read and he's such an interesting guy um it talks about a lot of his famous photos how they were made where he came from how he got into photography he was trained as a classical pianist uh his family used to spend their summers in yosee and he worked for a a um a um Film Studio that uh Film Studio it's not the right term uh I'm not really sure what to call it but place that develop prce for people on vacation basically um a couple others uh now these are all going to be lit books part of the Canon uh these books tend to be a little more expensive uh and I have a little note in here about that um the deal is is that photography monographs um you know in essence art books uh you're not going to want to read those on a candle you want the actual book they tend to be a little pricier than your average paperback but here's the deal they're very limited edition runs sometimes and they become hard to find and so they tend to not lose their value if you ever need to sell them back is what I'm saying um and there's a couple of I'm recommending because they're based on people we've talked about recently on the podcast uh the Americans by Robert Frank um I'll be honest you could probably scour your used bookstores and find an old copy of this it's the same stuff and it probably is a lot cheaper uh but there is a Americans retrospective uh that I'm recommending as well that was done just a couple years ago for the I believe it was 50th anniversary of the um of the seminal original book Americans Wuzzy book Robert Frank published and it's come out in different editions over the years and some of the crops change a little bit but it's basically the same stuff essential reading essential loing on that note we also talked about hre Cartier Bron and uh there's two of them in here that are pretty good I don't think you need both um the one I really recommend is the man image and the world and uh it's a excellent Greatest Hits it's not complete they rarely are but it has a lot of good stuff in it another guy obviously you guys know I love is heroi sugamoto um I recommended two monographs that are out right now these probably won't be in print long so if you're into sugamoto um I I'd recommend checking them out um there's uh one that's a career retrospective and there's another one that's based on architecture uh beautiful beautiful stuff the printing quality on these is amazing too um another couple things uh one of my favorite photographers that I haven't talked about so much on here lately but I planned to a gentleman named Abelardo Morel who is a Cuban born uh but American photographer who lives in Massachusetts uh known best for his camera obscura work uh but I think there's more genius to avelardo than just that uh there's a lot of wonderful uh photos that he's made I won't go too into it uh you know if you're halfway interested in these people just Google them and look at their websites I mean see if it's you might be interested in uh some stuff that I've seen this summer um some prints that that I recommend Hinrich Co who was a contemporary of stiglets and Sten and just a beautiful photographer very um very underrated I think I saw an exhibition at a gallery in New York that were selling some of his older prints beautiful stuff uh it's old school but it's it's like nobody else's there's this wonderful blur to it and and a lot of the printing technology he used uh you know everything from Japanese tissue paper to uh to photogra but but he had such a beautiful surreal quality to his work it's really unlike any of those other guys at that time and I don't know why he's not more known but uh um very wonderful um again if you want to look at this uh it's it's not surreal because surreal implies composition in a certain area of Modern Art but there's an impressionistic look uh particularly to kin's work because of the just the soft focus to it another one of my favorite photographers in that area is the Czechoslovakian Joseph sudek um who I haven't talked about much on here but I probably will soon because it's just it's Sublime uh it's just beautiful and he's an interesting guy too to talk about Michael Kenna I've talked about on here before there's a couple books by Michael I strongly recommend um both of them are career retrospectives and they're excellent cross-sections if you're looking to get into the work of British born Michael Kenna who is one of my favorites um just beautiful work uh another guy that I think is particularly outstanding and I put two books in a DVD on here is Keith Carter and Keith Carter actually is a Texas photographer he lives down in Houston and I'm proud that he's a fellow Texan uh I think he actually lives in Bowmont which is close uh but I think he literally is one of the more interesting photographers shooting today uh in Fine Art he is so brilliant uh his stuff he does a lot of manipulation it it's never gimmicky but it is an effect he uses in his work a lot where he will actually um uh he has a it's not a large format camera but it's it's a hosel blood that was made um they don't make them anymore called the uh Flex body which basically makes the hos i' like a large format camera so you do tilt and shift and he kind of messes up the Tilt and shift to throw the focus plane to get some interesting blurred effects sometimes uh Keith Carter is amazing uh excellent excellent excellent photographer the DVD is incredible I've watched it over and over I own it um I've ripped it and I put on my computer so I can watch on the Apple TV and I'll just put that on when I need inspiration uh there's a documentary and then there's two little segments that were filmed just him in his dark room I mean with just a a camcorder and he's showing you how he does prints and toning and it's I mean it's so beautiful and he's so cool you just want to sit down you can tell I get excited I love Keith Carter I'm going to talk about him more um I would love because Keith Carter is in my neighborhood uh via about 4-Hour Drive um maybe one day I can get Keith to do a podcast episode with me uh that would make me a very happy man um just to be able to meet one of him he meet him he's just one of the I really can't say enough about Keith uh black and white uh he's kind of big in the art world right now as far as photo galleries go and his stuff is amazing so anyway books check them out they're wonderful he has more than this I just put two of the better ones in here but uh they're all good and then finally one guy I talked about a long time ago on this show and this caught my eye I don't own this book but I am going to order it uh I'm going to order it tonight um Saul leader um I can't remember salul leer or Saul lighter uh but anyway Saul uh early colorist uh but was not known at the time he was a photojournalist did most of his work in black and white and actually shot a bunch of personal work that was all color um and he kind of brought a lot of this out and some some series of exhibitions he did probably about 1020 years ago and it's kind of Taken everyone you know everyone's breath away because it's just it's such an interesting use of abstraction and color but not too abstract and uh it's hard to explain his work um I have talked about him on the show before and there was a book called early color which is now out of print and as you can see the use copies go for a little bit of money um I would never part with mine it's one of my favorite books but uh there was an episode that we did on color and I will link that Below in the show notes and uh anyway there's a new book um that's got some images I haven't seen in it that are just Dro dead gorgeous and so that's a new one I've got to order too so see even I have to participate in the summer reading list so anyway um you know books are great um I'm a huge book guy and it's a great way to learn it's a great way to uh you know whether it's something from productivity to creativity to collecting artists monographs um I'm going to do some more I haven't done them in a little while but I mean obviously if you know the videos that I've done I've done a huge chunk of where I just throw the book on a table and give you a review of it um I'm really into books and one thing I'm going to say now too that I think is kind of sad is that the print industry particularly the book industry has been in so much trouble in the last couple years as far as being able to sell their stuff and this is sad and I books are very you know I work at an art museum and and the you know when we do a catalog for a show it's not my department that does it but uh it's gotten a where it's pretty expensive to do short runs especially of books bound books and so people are moving to ebooks and the like and it's hard to see whether it's going to shake out I love ebooks I love reading them on my iPad I've considered buying a kendle but I love it for text based books for picture books you I mean I I just don't want in that format I want something that's tactile that I can touch um and so I don't know I'm not an investor guy but I think books are pretty safe investment right now because I think in a couple years you're going to see the uh uh the avail ability of new books to go to almost nothing I mean I think in the if you live in the United States the fall of borders last year was a huge blow to that industry and I remember a time I I loved borders and I mean I was probably part of the problem I didn't buy them in there they were too expensive I'd go drink coffee and view them and then go buy them on Amazon later don't tell anybody but um anyway uh but I loved borders I mean there was a time in my life particularly in the height of the tech boom late '90s where I had a lot of extra money cuz I had a Kush job at the time and I bought a lot of books uh from borders this is before Amazon was really rolling as they are today and the selection alone that borders had towards the end was a horrible sign that they were not going to survive and I know I can't judge a whole bookstore based on art books but uh it's just kind of how it was anyway summer reading list go check it out link is below if you don't have it for whatever reason is the artof photography. TV I'll link it off the homepage or you can go to the artof photography. tv/ summer- readinglist and that will that will take you there I thought this would be kind of fun to do participate if you like summer reading list check it out thank you everybody for viewing once again this has been the Art of Photography and thank you for watchinghey everybody Ted Forbes here welcome back to the Art of Photography Vlog Edition today we are talking about the summer reading list um I'm trying to take a tone here that's very serious and academic um I've obviously very liberated since I quit my teaching job and uh should have dug out my old mortarboard from graduation to do this episode anyway I had an idea um that I would throw together that I think um I think there's a little bit of weight to this and it's something I kind of want to see some stuff collected um over the last couple years that I've been doing these shows since 20 8 there are off and on times that I recommend books um sometimes I've thought or I've talked more of um things like productivity and stuff like that and I thought it would be cool to put together a summer reading list uh people tend to have a little more time when they go on vacation during the summer um especially now that uh you probably have an iPad or Kindle that you read on and I thought it would be fun to compile a list of summer reading stuff and I've got these divided into some sections I'm going to put a link below uh you can check it out in the show notes um I I will be up front and saying that uh you know I'm using affiliate linking on here so if you like the podcast and you want to support it you are more than welcome to click on any of these links if you decide to buy one of these off of Amazon or you can go get them somewhere else it's up to you um but anyway it does help the show um so disclaimer there but I really did want to put together a list of stuff um and there's a lot of things I've been talking about recently in this um and I kind of want to go through the list a little bit so you know if you click on the link and open it a new window you can kind of look through with me um as you're you're watching this if you're on a computer um a couple things I wanted to do were productivity books and there are two I'm I'm kind of funny with productivity books because you know it's called productivity porn in the business but uh it's real easy to start reading about being efficient and not actually being efficient but there's two that I really recommend that helped me out a long time ago um a couple months ago I did an episode called GTD for photographers and if you haven't seen it you can check it out uh GTD I'll briefly explain is a method uh that gentleman named David Allen came up with a couple years ago I'm a big proponent of GTD and I plan on doing more episodes talking about how GTD which is a system of becoming organized with your day-to-day stuff how creativity can fit into that in a non- stifling way because I think that's kind of a challenge uh when we come up with productivity and to-do lists um being creative and doing creative work uh is not a checklist on an item it's more complicated than that and so you know if you want to Bone up on that before we get into some more that uh getting things done is a wonderful book highly recommend it um It's a Wonderful system it's it I've heard people describe as a complex system and it's not the reason I like it and I've done all the productivity systems Franklin cvy uh you know way back in the day and GTD or stands for getting things done reason I like it so much is because I tend to fall off the wagon we all do we get busy it's triage we're just trying to get a project done or a deadline or work fires up or you have a family thing or you know and you're just whatever you got to do to get done so we tend to fall off the wagon it's really easy to get back on the wagon with with GTD uh we'll talk about that in some future episodes another interesting note on that one of our um a gentleman named Lewis who is a uh a senior employee at a very well-known tech company um Lewis actually hooked me up with David Allen and I mean talk about you could have knocked me over with a feather the day I got an email from David Allen was a couple weeks ago after leis set that up and special thanks to LS for doing that he's he's a totally cool guy and I'm actually doing an interview with David Allen for David Allen's podcast and the name may not be much to you if you're not into GTD but this is a guy New York Times bestselling author I mean in GTD changed my life so much a couple years ago U it was really bizarre to get that invitation in a very cool way and so special thanks to Lewis for for hooking that up but anyway it's for David Allen GTD connect which is a podcast that's available on his subscription series and I'm very nervous about it trying to prepare and very excited all at the same time because I think it's going to be really cool because we're going to talk about creativity and a lot of that kind of stuff and so I will bring that to the podcast as well um anyway I said a lot about GTD I'm not going to do that with every book on this list um but I really think it it it is worth selling on you um I have an audio copy I have a hard copy and I keep a copy on my iPad and I refer to them constantly so it really was a life changer for me the only other productivity book that I've really found that made a difference for me is a book called The now habit and if you're like me uh I have a big problem with procrastination sometimes it's like you get lazy I just uh have other things to do uh prioritization off whatever um but I tend to procrastinate sometimes which is odd to say because I've been actually getting these podcasts out pretty regularly but I used to have a big problem with it and there's a book called The now habit written by Neil fiori who is a psychologist and also a hypnotist which is bizarre but it's a really good book that explores a lot of the reasons we procrastinate and kind of suggests some things that you can do to kind of I hate the word life hack but some things you can do to make adjustments in your own schedule and your own Groove that that help get things done better so they're really good combination of books um there's some others that I want to recommend as far as creativity and art go and uh get a lot of requests for you know hey you know uh what do you recommend in this area there's a couple books here U that I recommend um the first one being the creative habit by Twi Tharp it's very good um it's probably largely ghost written but it there's some really wonderful stuff in there um get it it's it's incredible I'm actually um in the middle of that right now couple that I have finished years ago that I really recommend and love the war of art by Steven pressfield is excellent It's kind of written um you know the Art of War the famous uh Japanese uh treaties on learning who your enemy is and all that which people still read today uh he wrote a kind of a little bit of a take on that called The War of art which talks about being creative and and and treating art like work and you're you know getting to it and I hate to use the phrase getting things done over and over but that's what it is is is being productive and in in Creative work which is very difficult uh there's a couple Seth Goden books that I have on here the dip is one I've talked about a lot before if you listen to the podcast I did with Wade Griffith um the audio thing that we did which is which is unfortunately no longer available but I'm working on getting those back out but anyway we talked about the dip a lot the dip is just you know the Journey of being creative and how there's some frustrations and some trials that come along during that process that uh and how to kind of lean into it and learn how to use that to your advantage uh the dip is very good if it's the dip applies to anything it could be a career um not necessarily in necessarily in the Arts it could be a career in the corporate world or it can be just you know with most of you guys who watch the show you know just even if you're not looking at making a career out of it I mean just the progress of becoming a great photographer and it gets frustrating sometimes you feel like you're not any good you don't know what you're doing you'll never be able to do it and generally I won't spoil the whole book it's it's a short book it's an easy read uh but it deals with that and and the whole notion of um you know learning that this is part of the process everybody goes through it and it's called the dip and how you come out of that dip and become successful one day um another one that I haven't read yet but it is free if you have a Kindle or if you have an iPad um called poke the box it's another Seth Goden book uh I threw it on there just because Seth is so good I've read oh gosh a ton of books that he's done uh tribes was an excellent one um I'm trying to keep these kind of applicable to creative stuff and photography um and so I I put po the Box on there because it's it's uh it's very inexpensive um anyway some other ones that I recommend the John blakemore's black and white photography Workshop is one of my favorite books of all time if you're interested in dark room work or shooting film any any of that stuff John Blakemore is a genius uh British photographer and teacher wonderful examples of photos in the book If you if you really want a comprehensive easy way to practically understand the zone system and how to put it to work the zone system was anel Adam's method uh John Blakemore does it um and it's way better than any of the other anel atams even I hate to say and its own system books because it really shows you and digs in uh how this is done what effects you can get out of it um what you want to bring to a print um even if you don't print in a dark if you're just printing on your computer I think there's a lot of really gold information in there just to understand about exposure uh black and white lowkey high key all that stuff um I've recommended that book over and over and over again it's not expensive you can get as a paperback it's the one Photography book that I purchased years ago that I still refer to all the time uh I can't recommend it enough so it's John Blakemore uh his John blakemore's black and white photography Workshop couple others uh if you're going to get into film you're going to get into zone system stuff like that uh the the the three anel Adams books they're kind of fun to own anyway and I think they're kind of must haves for any photographer particularly if you do film um and the three books if you don't know what they are they're the camera the negative and the print uh you should check them out um each one of them deals with each subject on its own uh some of the information deals with older technology and anel oh I don't want to say he was a bad writer but he Rambles on and on and he makes it more confusing than it needs to be um I think John Blakemore cleans that up but I do have all three of the anel um books and I keep those as reference uh even those even some of the developer Technologies is a little bit dated too now but anyway moving on to business stuff um there's a couple books that I recommend and I've noticed that some of these like 3- week weights I don't know if they're out of print or not there's John Harrington's best business practices for photographers which is really if you want to do photography as a business it's really kind of the Bible on how all that stuff works uh everything from contracts to self-promotion to whatever it is um it's it's essential so if you were going into business as a photographer you need to have it it's it's really good and it's up to date it's current it's only a couple years old another one is uh David duan's Vision mongers which is excellent too when he talks about developing his own photography career and kind of how that was done and it's done in a way where it's not just business um it's done in a very Artful way he talks about becoming better as a photographer and how to really make your art your cell point and uh again great book I read that a couple years ago I love it uh I threw in the anel Adams biography or the autobiography just cuz it's fun to read and he's such an interesting guy um it talks about a lot of his famous photos how they were made where he came from how he got into photography he was trained as a classical pianist uh his family used to spend their summers in yosee and he worked for a a um a um Film Studio that uh Film Studio it's not the right term uh I'm not really sure what to call it but place that develop prce for people on vacation basically um a couple others uh now these are all going to be lit books part of the Canon uh these books tend to be a little more expensive uh and I have a little note in here about that um the deal is is that photography monographs um you know in essence art books uh you're not going to want to read those on a candle you want the actual book they tend to be a little pricier than your average paperback but here's the deal they're very limited edition runs sometimes and they become hard to find and so they tend to not lose their value if you ever need to sell them back is what I'm saying um and there's a couple of I'm recommending because they're based on people we've talked about recently on the podcast uh the Americans by Robert Frank um I'll be honest you could probably scour your used bookstores and find an old copy of this it's the same stuff and it probably is a lot cheaper uh but there is a Americans retrospective uh that I'm recommending as well that was done just a couple years ago for the I believe it was 50th anniversary of the um of the seminal original book Americans Wuzzy book Robert Frank published and it's come out in different editions over the years and some of the crops change a little bit but it's basically the same stuff essential reading essential loing on that note we also talked about hre Cartier Bron and uh there's two of them in here that are pretty good I don't think you need both um the one I really recommend is the man image and the world and uh it's a excellent Greatest Hits it's not complete they rarely are but it has a lot of good stuff in it another guy obviously you guys know I love is heroi sugamoto um I recommended two monographs that are out right now these probably won't be in print long so if you're into sugamoto um I I'd recommend checking them out um there's uh one that's a career retrospective and there's another one that's based on architecture uh beautiful beautiful stuff the printing quality on these is amazing too um another couple things uh one of my favorite photographers that I haven't talked about so much on here lately but I planned to a gentleman named Abelardo Morel who is a Cuban born uh but American photographer who lives in Massachusetts uh known best for his camera obscura work uh but I think there's more genius to avelardo than just that uh there's a lot of wonderful uh photos that he's made I won't go too into it uh you know if you're halfway interested in these people just Google them and look at their websites I mean see if it's you might be interested in uh some stuff that I've seen this summer um some prints that that I recommend Hinrich Co who was a contemporary of stiglets and Sten and just a beautiful photographer very um very underrated I think I saw an exhibition at a gallery in New York that were selling some of his older prints beautiful stuff uh it's old school but it's it's like nobody else's there's this wonderful blur to it and and a lot of the printing technology he used uh you know everything from Japanese tissue paper to uh to photogra but but he had such a beautiful surreal quality to his work it's really unlike any of those other guys at that time and I don't know why he's not more known but uh um very wonderful um again if you want to look at this uh it's it's not surreal because surreal implies composition in a certain area of Modern Art but there's an impressionistic look uh particularly to kin's work because of the just the soft focus to it another one of my favorite photographers in that area is the Czechoslovakian Joseph sudek um who I haven't talked about much on here but I probably will soon because it's just it's Sublime uh it's just beautiful and he's an interesting guy too to talk about Michael Kenna I've talked about on here before there's a couple books by Michael I strongly recommend um both of them are career retrospectives and they're excellent cross-sections if you're looking to get into the work of British born Michael Kenna who is one of my favorites um just beautiful work uh another guy that I think is particularly outstanding and I put two books in a DVD on here is Keith Carter and Keith Carter actually is a Texas photographer he lives down in Houston and I'm proud that he's a fellow Texan uh I think he actually lives in Bowmont which is close uh but I think he literally is one of the more interesting photographers shooting today uh in Fine Art he is so brilliant uh his stuff he does a lot of manipulation it it's never gimmicky but it is an effect he uses in his work a lot where he will actually um uh he has a it's not a large format camera but it's it's a hosel blood that was made um they don't make them anymore called the uh Flex body which basically makes the hos i' like a large format camera so you do tilt and shift and he kind of messes up the Tilt and shift to throw the focus plane to get some interesting blurred effects sometimes uh Keith Carter is amazing uh excellent excellent excellent photographer the DVD is incredible I've watched it over and over I own it um I've ripped it and I put on my computer so I can watch on the Apple TV and I'll just put that on when I need inspiration uh there's a documentary and then there's two little segments that were filmed just him in his dark room I mean with just a a camcorder and he's showing you how he does prints and toning and it's I mean it's so beautiful and he's so cool you just want to sit down you can tell I get excited I love Keith Carter I'm going to talk about him more um I would love because Keith Carter is in my neighborhood uh via about 4-Hour Drive um maybe one day I can get Keith to do a podcast episode with me uh that would make me a very happy man um just to be able to meet one of him he meet him he's just one of the I really can't say enough about Keith uh black and white uh he's kind of big in the art world right now as far as photo galleries go and his stuff is amazing so anyway books check them out they're wonderful he has more than this I just put two of the better ones in here but uh they're all good and then finally one guy I talked about a long time ago on this show and this caught my eye I don't own this book but I am going to order it uh I'm going to order it tonight um Saul leader um I can't remember salul leer or Saul lighter uh but anyway Saul uh early colorist uh but was not known at the time he was a photojournalist did most of his work in black and white and actually shot a bunch of personal work that was all color um and he kind of brought a lot of this out and some some series of exhibitions he did probably about 1020 years ago and it's kind of Taken everyone you know everyone's breath away because it's just it's such an interesting use of abstraction and color but not too abstract and uh it's hard to explain his work um I have talked about him on the show before and there was a book called early color which is now out of print and as you can see the use copies go for a little bit of money um I would never part with mine it's one of my favorite books but uh there was an episode that we did on color and I will link that Below in the show notes and uh anyway there's a new book um that's got some images I haven't seen in it that are just Dro dead gorgeous and so that's a new one I've got to order too so see even I have to participate in the summer reading list so anyway um you know books are great um I'm a huge book guy and it's a great way to learn it's a great way to uh you know whether it's something from productivity to creativity to collecting artists monographs um I'm going to do some more I haven't done them in a little while but I mean obviously if you know the videos that I've done I've done a huge chunk of where I just throw the book on a table and give you a review of it um I'm really into books and one thing I'm going to say now too that I think is kind of sad is that the print industry particularly the book industry has been in so much trouble in the last couple years as far as being able to sell their stuff and this is sad and I books are very you know I work at an art museum and and the you know when we do a catalog for a show it's not my department that does it but uh it's gotten a where it's pretty expensive to do short runs especially of books bound books and so people are moving to ebooks and the like and it's hard to see whether it's going to shake out I love ebooks I love reading them on my iPad I've considered buying a kendle but I love it for text based books for picture books you I mean I I just don't want in that format I want something that's tactile that I can touch um and so I don't know I'm not an investor guy but I think books are pretty safe investment right now because I think in a couple years you're going to see the uh uh the avail ability of new books to go to almost nothing I mean I think in the if you live in the United States the fall of borders last year was a huge blow to that industry and I remember a time I I loved borders and I mean I was probably part of the problem I didn't buy them in there they were too expensive I'd go drink coffee and view them and then go buy them on Amazon later don't tell anybody but um anyway uh but I loved borders I mean there was a time in my life particularly in the height of the tech boom late '90s where I had a lot of extra money cuz I had a Kush job at the time and I bought a lot of books uh from borders this is before Amazon was really rolling as they are today and the selection alone that borders had towards the end was a horrible sign that they were not going to survive and I know I can't judge a whole bookstore based on art books but uh it's just kind of how it was anyway summer reading list go check it out link is below if you don't have it for whatever reason is the artof photography. TV I'll link it off the homepage or you can go to the artof photography. tv/ summer- readinglist and that will that will take you there I thought this would be kind of fun to do participate if you like summer reading list check it out thank you everybody for viewing once again this has been the Art of Photography and thank you for watching\n"