Annie Leibovitz At Work [BOOK REVIEW]

Looking for a Christmas gift for that photographer in your life? Or maybe a little something for yourself? Perhaps this book Annie Leibovitz at Work will fit the bill. Linda (one of our great forum admins) reviews it here.

Not your usual collection of photographic images, this is more than just a picture book. In it Leibovitz takes you through life as a photographer, what it means to her and the background of some of her famous, and some not so famous, photographs.

It can be fascinating to see one of her shots and read her descriptions of how it came to be: what went through her mind and why she decided to shoot it the way she did. We get to enter the mind of a great portrait photographer. Little bits of information sprinkled throughout the book, the importance of environment, how there is more latitude with digital color than film color (greens photograph too dark without appropriate light on film), the importance of natural light. Not too much technical information here. If you want to know camera settings and lighting set-ups, this will not satisfy you. But she does devote some time to explaining her equipment. She often uses just a single strobe and umbrella to help balance natural light (shades of Strobist!) and is happy with the move to digital, because of the added information it gives to her image. Being tethered to computers leaves her cold; she’s definitely more interested in the creative side.

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