photography books with added froth

[Endeavour]

Trying to find books on pro commercial photography and whilst there are a teeny tiny amount of  good books, I am amazed, or should I say disappointed, at the amount of froth on the shelves

now I know the fall-back income generator for some photographers, is to write a book. but how many books out there have been published, with a good 1/3 of the book taken up with "and this is how a camera works" "this is an aperture" "this is what a sensor is"

Of course we've all needed to know this stuff, but why does photography genre seem to start from zero before moving onto more indepth topics? (the reason why you wanted the book in the 1st place)
Does the author assume people will only ever buy a single book on photography and want everything covered from novice to a pro by the last page?

Plenty of other topics (computing is a good example) which take an approach of treating the reader not as a lemon but as someone who is already interested in the subject matter and doesnt need to know what a keyboard is or how a mouse works before finally getting to the part about writing a bit of code in python.

Am I being cynical that its just padding and the fact is the author doesnt have enough new material to justify a book, so has to fill it with identical information found in 98% of the surrounding books on the shelf?


just a friday musing

[Rob C]

AFAIK the reason is that basic 'how to' books will get published, but 'art' books or monographs will not unless the author is already a star in the photographic firmament and beyond. Owning a pubishing company can help... The attracted buyer-base has to be pretty broad in order to generate a reasonable chance or profit or, at least, avoid loss.

How many people actually care about pro photography?

Rob

[Otto Phocus]

I would imagine that a "good" book on professional photography would have very little information on photography but a lot of information on legal, financial, and advertizing issues of running a business.

[Rob C]

Yes, and even then, would it be of any real value? I imagine that most of us make a lot of mistakes in business, many in good faith. One that cost me a lot of money was not knowing the difference between a principal contractor (the ad agency guy who hired me) and his client who, working alongside me on a shoot (my direct client was not), instructed me to extend both the time-scale as well as the scope of a shoot. Imagining that his request would form part of the deal, I was astonished to discover, weeks later, that I had no right to that sweet idea. Even worse, I ended up going to a lawyer, and the entire episode cost me even the fee that I received for the original part of the shoot. Lose/lose. I lost the ad agency for many years, until one of my own clients turned to them for some tv work, and insisted that they continue using me because they were happy with the work I already did for them in other forms of advertising.

Would a book have helped? Only if written by somebody who'd been there himself!

I sort of think that business is just life: some people act in good faith and others do not. Not much prepares you for that - just that you know with whom to refuse to work again.

Rob

[scyth]

Am I being cynical that its just padding and the fact is the author doesnt have enough new material to justify a book, so has to fill it with identical information found in 98% of the surrounding books on the shelf?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/exclusive-inside-a-million-dollar-amazon-kindle-catfishing-scam/

[RSL]

What is it you're looking for in these books, Lotus? Otto and Rob hit the nail on the head. We've reached a point in the equipment sphere where you don't need to know a damn thing to shoot reasonably good pictures. You don't need to know about various types of film. You don't need to know about the qualities of various developers. You don't need to know how to use an enlarger. You don't need to know how to print. All you need to know is where the shutter button is. You might want a book on artificial lighting, but the rest is business. What you probably need is a business book.

I still take Popular Photography, Shutterbug, and Digital Photo Pro. Mostly what I get from these publications is a laugh. The internet has taken away their ad pages, and their "experts" never really did know what they were talking about, so they print froth about new equipment that nobody really needs. It's entertaining but not instructive.