If you are serious about photography and the business of photography, this one is a must on your bookshelf!
Both Joe and I own copies of the first edition of John Harrington’s Best Business Practices for Photographers
. Just to avoid misunderstandings, this book is not focusing on how to get started as a professional photographer. Instead, it is a hard-hitting guide to all aspects of working as a professional photographer, from Marketing to negotiating deals, stock photography to assignments, budgeting to amortizing your gear and working with assistants to legal matters.
I learned a lot by just reading the 352 pages of the first version and there’s more to learn in the updated version, whose page count swelled to over 500. New areas and updates focus on:
- Transitioning from staff photographer to freelancer
- Working with others now covers reps and talent in addition to assistants and contractors
- Pricing your work was expanded to include setting your fees
- Insurance does not only cover health, life, disability, and business insurance, but also errors & omission and umbrella insurance
- How to deal with IRS audits (yes, that happens to photographers, too)
- The realities of Copyright infringement and how to send DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Takedown notices
- Model and other releases
- Tools and software to make licensing your work easier, faster and more concise
- Stock photography without the big agencies
While my copy of the second editiopn is on order and I have not had a chance to read it, we really liked the first edition. If you do not want to spend the money on a new copy of the book, try at least to get a used copy of the first edition. You will not regret it.
Verdict: Highly recommended and certainly an Editor’s Pick!
Price: $34.99, Amazon: $23.09
Recently, no starch press sent me a review copy of one of their newest books, My New iPhone, by Wallace Wang. It is one of their “My New” series, which helps new buyers of a gadget or piece of electronics with their initial steps to get acquainted with their new “toy”.
The book contains 52 chapters (called “projects”), with each project covering a different aspect of the iPhone. While the initial projects focus on the most basic operation such as operating the iPhone, sending text message and setting up email, the later projects cover the various applications and also some of the third party apps that can be downloaded from the AppStore. The book itself is not a rehash of the iPhone manual – instead, the author chose the projects format to start high-level, but then dig a bit deeper and end with an “Additional Ideas” section. Each project is well written and presented. To see for yourself, just download a sample chapter.
Since our blog covers photo and video on the iPhone, I immediately looked up the two photo sections. The author sufficiently covered snapping pictures, viewing them on the iPhone in all different manners, assigning them as wall-paper and even uploading them.
It is noteworthy that while the book covers iPhone 3.0, it does not cover the iPhone 3GS. Thus, there was no section on video. I hope no starch plans on releasing a second edition of the book.
Even for an advanced iPhone user like me, the book had quite a bit to offer. I liked three aspects of the book:
- If I needed to look up something in the hurry, I had no problems finding it via search in the eBook, And I already did so – something I had forgotten I easily found in the book.
- Since there are so many projects, the book covered aspects of the iPhone that I’ve yet to explore. One of them is using the iPhone as a radio, either through AOL or Pandora. I will definitely try that out
- Each projects ends with an “Additional Ideas” section where the author quickly outlines a few more things you could explore. Similar to above, I found tricks and apps in these sections that I was not aware of and thus I will download some of the covered apps
Overall, the book was a quick and good read for me. Its organization into chapters lends itself to both quick browsing and perusing a particular chapter in-depth. I can recommend it to anyone who plans on buying an iPhone or has not spend a lot of time with his/her iPhone.
440 pages. ISBN: 978-1-59327-195-4
Price: $29.95 in Softcover, $23.95 for the eBook bundle.
p.s.
Full Disclosure: no starch press is a sponsor of ours for the month of September, 2009.
Quickly – how many photographs do you manage? One thousand? One hundred thousand? Even more? And how well are they organized? Or could your digital photo management use some improvement?
The first edition of Peter Krogh’s DAM (Digital Asset Management) book was not only a great read, but I adopted (and modified slightly) many of his ideas to improve my own image management practices. But the book was published in 2005 and was based on Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Bridge. Not only has Photoshop evolved, but image management / organizer software such as Lightroom and Aperture have been released since. Thus, Peter Krogh updated the entire content of the book and released a second edition which is now available in book stores.
In addition, Peter also updates the companion website to the DAM book which features resources and a very active forum where you can discuss his ideas and the way you intend to implement them.
Today, I use Lightroom to manage all my photos, including pictures taken with my iPhone. Many of my day-to-day management practices were taken straight from Peter’s book or were adapted to fit my peculiar setup. DAM useful proved dam useful to me, indeed!
We rated the first edition as “Highly Recommended” and just placed our own order
for the second edition of the book. We can’t wait to get our hands on it.
Price: $49.95, Amazon: Amazon: $31.49
