The fully-loaded, laugh-and-learn handbook for anyone who's dead serious about improving the quality of their digital photos! Helps amateurs and pros develop a personal winning style, nurture a "visual eye," and bring spirit and excitement to all the images they capture Teaches powerful techniques ranging from "Film Noir" to the super-hot "Ring Flash" fashion look By former UPI photojournalist Derek Pell, whose work has appeared everywhere from The New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone to Interview Once photographers know the basic technical stuff -- aperture settings, depth of field, and so forth -- where do they go to learn how to shoot an interesting picture? Today's auto-focus cameras can hardly miss, so why are there so many mediocre images around? What's missing? A visual eye. Spirit. Excitement. Can that be taught? Can photographers learn how to bring themselves to their images, building on what the camera can do for them? Yes - and Shoot to Thrill will show them how. Former UPI photojournalist Derek Pell shows photographers what it takes to develop their own winning style... offering crucial insights they'll never find in a typical digital photography book. Drawing on his own long experience, he also presents powerful creative techniques such as: how to achieve dramatic Film Noir lighting... how to get the Ring Flash look that's currently the rage in fashion photography... how to experiment with portrait lighting when you can't afford to hire a model or get a friend to sit... how to improve everything from still lives to action photos. Pell's inimitable style makes this book as much a pleasure to read as it is to look at - and it's the one book that'll take photographers from where they are to where they want to be.

Derek Pellis a writer, visual artist, and photographer. He’s the author of more than 20 books, including Morbid Curiosities, Doktor Bey’s Bedside Bug Book, Assassination Rhapsody, and The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion. Novelist Robert Coover calls Pell “...a wordplay master and a parodist of great wit and cunning.” Larry McCaff ery declared him “the most wickedly funny writer in America.” The New York Times Book Reviewreferred to him as “a British misanthrope-humorist”—despite the fact he was born in New York City. He describes himself as “self-uneducated,” although he attended The Art Institute of Chicago and The Goodman School of Drama.

 

Pell worked as a press photographer for United Press International (UPI) for several years. As a freelance photojournalist, his photographs have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Rolling Stone, Lens Culture, L.A. Weekly, The London Times, New York Magazine, Interview, The Village Voice, American Forests, and Zink.

 

He created the popular “hard-boiled” column The Laptop Detective, which appeared monthly in PC Laptop Magazine, and for 12 years served as editor-in-chief of the online technology review, DingBat. Today, Derek lives in San Diego, California, where he edits Zoom Street(www.zoomstreet.org), an online magazine devoted to digital photography.

 

introduction: the F Stops Here

Prologue: I Cover the Watergate

CHAPTER 1 Packin' Heat

The D-SLR

Assault & Batteries

Memory Cards

Gear Bags

Legs

Flash

Cheap Thrills: Odds 'N Ends

    Author's Note

CHAPTER 2 Call for Backup!

How Many Backups Are Enough?

If the Mob Can Get Organized, So Can You

Photoshop, Lightroom, & Bridge, Oh My!

    Creating a Custom Preset

    The Bridge

    A View From the Bridge

CHAPTER 3 Private Eyes

Sleep Mode

Method Acting: Comedy or Tragedy?

You're the Lead, Not the Walk-On

Find the A.N.G.E.L.

    Anomaly

    Gesture

    Expression

CHAPTER 4 Hand-to-Cam Combat

Get to Know Your ISO

Whose White Balance Is It, Anyway?

Metering Patterns

    Matrix Metering

    Spot Metering

    Center-Weighted Metering

Play It Again, S.A.M.

    Aperture Priority

    Shutter Priority (S)

    Manual Mode (M)

Programmed-Auto (P)

Busting the Bracket Racket

Exposure Compensation (EV)

CHAPTER 5 Twinkle, Twinkle Little Noir

Ambient Light

Imagining Light and Re-creating It

Nighttime Is the Right Time...For Noir

Portable Flash Is Your Buddy

An Ounce of Bounce = Fills & Thrills

    Grids, Snoots, Gobos, & Chizzlers

    A Knockout in the Ring

    What, Me Pop-Up?

    The Big Guns: Studio Strobes

Cover Story

CHAPTER 6 A Thirst for Burst

Speed Traps: The Curse of Burst

    Twist 'N Shoot

    Screen Idle

Hocus-Pocus, Hokum-Focus

"You Lookin' for Action?"

    Good Burst, Bad Burst

    Let's Roll

    "Everybody Freeze!"

There's More to Burst Than Sports

Take a Break from the Action and Look Around

CHAPTER 7 From Chump to Champ

Did Somebody Call the Crops?

    The Case of the Missing Subject

    Less Is More...More or Less

    Stretchin' the Truth

Sharpen Me Deadly

"Have You Tried Calling Noise Abatement?"

Manipulations, Great and Small

    Trick or Treat?

Art for Art's Sake (and for Pete's Sake, Too)

There Ain't Nothin' Like a Dame

    The Blemish Masters

CHAPTER 8 The Devil Is In the Details

HDRI on the Streets of San Diego

Cheap Thrills Contest

Bypass the Bleached Blonde with the Luger

High Pass: The Knockout Punch

    High Pass Thrills and Chills

CHAPTER 9 "I've Been Framed!"

Hangin' on the Web

Hangin' on the Wall

A Rogue's Gallery Meets MoMA

Print It for Posterity

CHAPTER 10 "Play It Again, Cam..."

"Lights...Cameras...Limitations!"

Hybrid on a Hot Tin Roof

    DV Dinners

    Dead Pans and Zoom Goons

     "We Didn't Need Faces. We Had Dialogue."

    A DV Thrill

The Happy Ending

APPENDIX A Hot Links, Cool Leads

Cameras/Computers/Backup/Portable Drives/Printers

Memory Cards

Tripods/Monopods/Gorillas

Lights/Lighting Accessories

Camera Bags and Straps

Accessories

Frames/Inkjet/Papers

Hard-Boiled Software

Inspiration

Online Pubs, Blogs, and Reference

APPENDIX B A Hard-Boiled Library

Nuts 'N Bolts

Art Photography/Critical Works

Noir Reference

Fiction

DV

 

 

9780789742407    TOC    8/24/2009