People in Focus: How to Photograph Anyone, Anywhere

Rating:
Summary: You won't offend people to ask them a model
Review: How many times you want to take people photo and you're afraid? How many times you want to take people photo and you don't have camera? This book will answer your first question and give you many good reasons to have camera with you all the time. Many Bryan's photo will inspire you to have your camera for the next best shots. The important of people photography is the communication among "camera", , "situation", "photographer", and "model". Bryan shows you the optimal way to integrate all four factors for better communication of your people photography.

Rating:
Summary: very helpful mainstream portrait photography guidebook
Review: The book is loosely organised in chapters each covering one aspect of people-photography. Chapter introductions are rather mellow. It's really a large collection of example photos. Each one is elaborately discussed, including "the story behind" and technical info. Some of the photos are very good indeed. Most are mainstream pictures, however: technically perfect, but not quite inspiring. (Though I wish I could consistently obtain that level of quality myself.) Good book if you have time to read from A to Z and have a patient nature. Very valuable information can be gathered, but it's scattered throughout the book. I made a one-page summary myself.

Rating:
Summary: A comprehensive course
Review: This may be the only book you'll ever need to read on the subject of photographing people outside of the formal portrait studio. This is a blessing, because very few books, good or bad, are available on this very important subject to amateurs and professional photojournalists. Peterson covers every aspect of taking pictures of people, including selecting subjects to photograph, approaching subjects, effects of different lighting, equipment and even some of the business aspects like model releases and stock photography. And, his images are wonderful. The only negative aspect - and this is present in most of his books - is that Bryan tends to forget that most people who read his book are not as well-travelled or equipped as he is. Many of the photographs were taken in exotic places abroad and he uses an expensive 300 meter lens for many of his shots. He has a reason for the latter, but let him explain. Take it with a grain of salt, and trust that you don't have to have such extreme equipment or go to such exotic places to get the results you want from following his instructions.