[Livre] Dial, set, trigger!

Yes, topping Amazon sales just 1 month after its release (and now 7th, but still!). Nice success, and after reading it, a strong success deserved. To tell you the truth, it’s just the best book about learning how to take a picture that I’ve ever held in my hands. A real goldmine for the beginner and even the confirmedwe’ll see why. Yes, I’m pushing hard, but I’ve got adored ! 😉

But first, let’s talk a little bit about the author.

The author

First of all, I’m telling you a little bit about his work because his style The photographic impact on the contents of the book is enormous. If you look at his blog (and I strongly encourage you to do so!), you’ll see that there are a lot of images very graphicsThe result is a clean, uncluttered, often taken in the street or in its immediate environment, in short photos of daily life.

Anne-Laure is the photographer who succeeds in rendering beautiful see movingor holder of meaning anything she might come across on the street. And that’s a hell of a exploit. Didn’t you ever see anything like this before?interesting visually, that inspires you a little, that you feel the potential photographic, but can’t make anything out of it? I do, and I have to say that piercing the secret of these everyday images really intrigued me 😀

That doesn’t mean that if you don’t like this style of photography, you shouldn’t buy the book: the principles it teaches are really universalYou can take pictures with compact cameras, SLRs, mobile phones, and even to a lesser extent with film (because the post-processing part will be of less use to you, of course ^^).

Indeed, the content is finally very little technical and focuses a lot on the photographic approach and on the composition in all its aspects rather than on the in-depth explanation of highly technical notions.

See, first and foremost

It feels good to read a photo book that devotes its entire first part to the look. That is to say, you can simply read and apply the very first part without a device photo! All you need is eyes. Anne-Laure teaches us to openand to see colours, shapes, lines, materials, light and shadow, reflections… in short everything that can enrich (or disrupt) our images.

Call

And once you’ve seen it, you have to… showthat’s the essence of the picture. And there again, before evoking even the triangle of the exhibition or the depth of field, Anne Laure almost devotes the half from his book to the composition.

And in detail please! Starting with position yourself and choose an angleand then a section on the framingand finally one on the composition in the more classical sense of the term (off-center its subject, all that…).

It’s a pretty good approach. daring than to focus on composition before technique, and to tell you the truth, that first part is so much excellent that she’s worth buying the book alone.

Set

But of course, Anne-Laure also talks to us about techniquebut… technically 😀 Let me explain: the technique is not discussed for herselfit is approached for what it can bring you in terms of creativity.

Because, if you’re reading the blog, you must have understood how aperture and shutter speed work (well, I hope :D). But do you use it in a way creative ? It’s not always easy to release technical thinking to really use his knowledge to his advantage. fullest potential. And this part of the book helps really I guess. I mean, I’m comfortable with the technical concepts (fortunately, I’m explaining them to you ^^), but I still have learned things.

Anyway, I sincerely think it can be very… useful to put in application what you’ve been able to understand thanks to the blog!

Trigger

Finally, the book ends with notions of post-processingwhich, like the whole book, remain very general and not related to any particular software. That’s what I try to do as much as possible on this blog: that what I’m saying can be reproduced with any software.

But the strength of the end of the book is above all that it focuses on aspects finally barely mentioned in classic books and even on the web, such as the sorting and the image selection (even though I mentioned it a little while ago, coincidence), or theexpression, l’intention the constitution of a photographic series (excellent double page!) or the expression of your personality.

Obviously, these are subjects extensivefor which there is no one truth, but Anne-Laure gives us leads valuable to make pictures that we looks like…and that’s worth its weight in gold.

The photo step by step

In addition to the topics covered which are really very interesting and the approach which is quite original (thanks to Eyrolles to have given him the freedom to write in a not too academic but very pedagogical way !), the book is very good organized :

• Every theme is presented on a double-page spread which explains in textin images and in diagrams the concept, and ends up exercises to be applied to understand and master the subject of this double-page spread.
• All these themes are interdependentand if you are really beginners I advise you to read in order, especially because it is not done randomly and in my opinion excellent for beginners.
  But if you wish, you can actually take a double-page spread offhandIf you have not read the rest of this document, the other topics you should have read are indicated, so there is no risk of getting lost in it. It is ideal for pick up the book if necessary and read again the parts we haven’t quite gotten through. In other words, you’re only going to not put it back in the cupboard once it has been swallowed and digested. come out regularly to put a concept or an idea into your head. And not many books can boast about it!
• The book is enamelled with double pages “ Workshop “, where the author explains a photographic approach that really incrementally (and illustrated with photos of course), such as for example paneled. Excellent exercises to better understand!

In summary

You got it, you need this 😉 (No, I don’t have shares at Anne-Laure Jacquart SA :P) You can also consult the complete summary of the book to decide 😉.

Click here to buy the book

I don’t pretend to know all the photo books and all the websites and blogs in the world, but I don’t think you’ll find never the same thing elsewhere. Maybe a little because, for once, it’s a book written by a woman 🙂.

Feel free to leave a comment if you too have read this book, or if you’re convinced and go run on Amazon to have it delivered to you as soon as possible ;D

The Amazon links contained in this article are affiliate links, meaning that I get a small commission for each article you buy via these links, without you paying more of course 😉. This helps me to continue to provide you with all the content of this blog! 🙂.

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