Book Nook - Extreme Exposure

It's focus on photography week!  And this week's Book Nook book is a timely choice, giving the reader all they need to take their shots to the next level.

Extreme Exposure: Pushing the Limits of Aperture and Shutter Speed for High-Impact Photography written by David Nightingale.  If you love photography, then you should check out this book: it goes over all the elements of exposure.  And once you understand what your aperture can do and the results of different shutter speeds, then you can really tweak your photos - in some cases, to the extreme.

The book starts off with the basics about exposure: the equipment that you need (besides your camera), how to read a histogram, ISO and exposure value.  The author then explains depth of field and how you can control it by choosing the aperture.  And then shutter and how you can drastically change the look of your photos by your choice of shutter.  Excellent photo examples are given and the author shares which camera body, lens, f-stop, shutter and ISO was used for each example (which I love - that information always helps me really understand the photo).

There are informative chapters on ultra-long shutter speeds (like in night photography and shooting fireworks), ultra-short shutter speeds (like for panning), ultra-wide apertures (to get shallow depth of field - this chapter also has some good info on extreme lenses, such as tilt and shift lenses and the lensbaby) and ultra-small apertures (when you want everything in focus - also this chapter has some information about focus stacking).  Within some of these chapters are sections on doing some really extreme shots, like painting with light.  There is a lot of inspiration in this book, and for me, it really got me excited to try some of these extreme photos that I've never thought to try.  This would be a great book for someone in a photography-rut - surely, the images and techniques shown will serve to inspire!

Of course, getting out of auto-mode and going full manual is the best way to go - learn by experience, and before you know it, you'll be a pro at exposure.  However, this is a great book to guide photographers along, whether you are an amateur or a pro.  Just trying out some of these techniques, that push us a bit out of our comfort zone, will only make us better photographers.  And there will be some pretty cool images to show for the attempt, too!

-Cheryl