David Pearce’s first book under the Oliver Cameron imprint is a wonderful, if flawed offering, full of helpful advice, phenomenal photography and iddy-biddy pictures.
I really want to gush about the book being perfect, but I can’t, for three reasons. The first is the font size. While it’s not unreadable, it is small enough that I had to make sure I was reading in a well-lit area and holding the book at exactly the right distance away from my face. David spent a lot of time and effort making sure the font was readable, and it is. It’s just that it’s small enough that it makes me feel … old. Books aren’t supposed to do that to me. Bad book.
Second, not only is the font small, but the pictures are small, too. There are some phenomenal photos in here: epic shots reproduced at, like 4 cm by 7 cm. But bigger photos, unfortunately, would go against the whole point of the book. This is not acoffee table book. David set out to create a book that could fit easily into a pocket of your photo bag. Something that photographers could take with them and use as inspiration on-site. Something that could be glanced at while changing lenses before setting up the next shot. On that level, the book succeeds wonderfully, and there are 500 shots crammed into what is only slightly bigger than a paperback romance novel, but I WANT TO SEE BIGGER PHOTOS, DARNIT.
The third reason is that there’s too much information. Nearly a hundred pages go by without so much as a posing suggestion anywhere. It’s all lighting and workflow and composition and basics of posing… um, skip that last one. Don’t get me wrong. It’s all great information. Some of it guest written by Chuck Arlund and David Beckstead. It’s just that it’s not about posing. It becomes more of a pocket guide to wedding photography. Yes, I said it. The book is too helpful, with too much information.
But really, this is a solid book, and one that most every wedding photographer might want in their bag (unless possibly your name rhymes with Larry Frehonis), and one that I’d recommend to most every wedding photographer to pick up. Especially for DWF members. While David went out of his way to include lesser known photographers from around the world, the book could almost be titled “The DWF’s guide to Posing”. From the cover photo by Mark Pavl…Pawli… Mark over at Unique Images to the sections written by David and Chuck, to photos by Steve Z, Humza, DQ, John Michael Cooper and a bunch of others, to the last page, which is basically a “why you should join the DWF”, the book is full of DWFers. Heck, even I’m in there, holding the light for a couple of Mark P’s shots, which I got a real kick out of.
One of my favourite bits about the book is that every photo has a write-up about it, pointing out things that the reader might not be aware of, analyzing the photo. Many posing books don’t have this analysis, which raises David’s book out of the fray, placing it on a different level then the competition. Is it perfect? Nope. Just better than most.
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1 Comment at "Wedding Photography: A Guide to Posing review"
Thanks for the review Trent – I am pleased that overall you really liked the book. Can I quickly address a couple of points for clarification?
1. The font size is pretty small but easily readable and we tested it on 18-80 year olds. We have sold over 5000 copies and no one has mentioned that it was difficult to read. The size is larger though in it’s sister book on Wedding Photojournalism and Boudoir.
2. The images are quite small (to fit in the book) but you can see them all clearly and see the points the text is making about them.
3. To me, a posed image is the complete image. That has to include the location and light. If we did not discuss these important aspects within the book it would be a incomplete as they are as important to a posed image as the pose itself.
4. There are a number of DWF contributors (as so many people are members!) but on balance a lot more who are not. I really strived to get people not in the limelight to contribute and have hopefully succeeded.
5. The size again… The book was always planned to be this size to fit in a camera bag. I published the book as I felt I was doing the same poses at each wedding. My memory is bad so I wanted something I could put “post it” notes in to mark certain images and then quickly reference them at a wedding to refresh my memory. I also wanted the book (in these hard times) to be affordable to everyone. Had I made it bigger it would have needed to be a lot more expensive. Training products are very pricey in general and I wanted to buck the trend and have an amazing book that not only was full of knowledge but also remarkable value.
Can I please quote your comment “The book is too helpful, with too much information” in my marketing? I am genuinely happy with that.
Thank you for letting me comment and thank you all once again for your support.
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