101 Quick and Easy Secrets for Using Your Digital Photographs [Book Review]

admin | Nov 09, 2009 | Comments View Comments

101 Quick and Easy Secrets for Using Your Digital Photographs [Amazon] by Matthew Bamberg

Like most photographers in the digital era you probably have a hard drive (if not many) filled with tons of great photographs just sitting there collecting virtual dust. 101 Quick and Easy Secrets for Using Your Digital Photographs aims at helping to show you how to make the most of those digital photos detailing the best ways to manipulate, manage, publish, share, and promote your digital images.

About the Author

Matthew Bamberg is a photographer and writer based in Palm Springs, California. He began his career in the arts as a graduate student at San Francisco State University in 1992 His work in the visual and media arts included video production and software applications. He completed his M.A. in Creative Arts in 1997. After being a public-school teacher for 14 years, Bamberg became a photographer and writer, taking pictures for the articles he was writing while working for the Desert Sun and Palm Springs Life magazine. He has traveled all over the world, photographing everything from wildlife to architecture. His photography has been published in many magazines, both locally and in Asia. Bamberg is the author of 101 Quick and Easy Secrets to Create Winning Photographs [Amazon] and 50 Greatest Photo Opportunities in San Francisco [Amazon] and coauthor of David Busch’s Pentax K200D Guide to Digital SLR Photography [Amazon], all published by Course Technology PTR.

Concept

The idea is to get your photos off the hard drive(s) of your computer(s) and into the real world, whether that includes the online world via photo-sharing sites or the offline world with printing and other projects.

I like that Bamberg has done this book even though most of this information is spread throughout the Internet by blogs and websites like the one your reading now. It’s really handy to have a book in hand that you can reference, bookmark, and share with others. I still like books for reference because of this.

Bamberg is an accomplished photographer with talent and the photographs throughout the book as well as the screen shots make great examples for the various sections and chapters. It’s Bamberg’s past experience as a school teacher, however, that makes this book really shine. The text is easy to read and steps are easy to follow. Bamberg seems to have done a good job keeping his target audience in mind when putting together each of the sections in the book.

The Best

Bamberg does a great job of putting together a “catch all” of things to do with your digital photos. This is great for newer photographers, film to digital switchers, and Internet newbies alike. His writing style is uncomplicated and easy to follow. The flow of the book makes sense going from prepping your photos, sharing your photos, using your photographs, scrap-booking, etc…

There really is enough of a little bit of everything for the digital era photographer.

The not-so Best

I always worry about books like this where new technologies are trying to be introduced and explained to an audience that isn’t as technologically advanced as the earlier adopters. That being said, these types of books are important because we all know people who still prefer to learn from books rather than websites. Nothing wrong with that. Will this book be too dated in a few short years? Perhaps…but I feel like Bamberg did a good job of choosing only the most popular (and perhaps longer lasting) websites and technologies in the book.

Conclusion

We are in an age where digital photographers are wanting to do more with their photos than just share with family. I fully expect to see more books on this topic to come out with greater frequency as technologies and ideas for using digital photographs expands (In fact I have another book on this very topic, for review, on my desk as I type).

Are you Bamberg’s target audience? That’s the real question in rating this book. If you’re a regular reader of digital photography blogs and websites then the answer is probably not. If you’re new here and don’t have time to “look up” or discover things to do with your photos on your own, then this book would probably be a welcome addition to your library.

I’d give this book to one of my favorite relatives that is newer to online photo sharing, doesn’t really read blogs, but always has a camera in hand and I’m willing to bet that they’d love it. And for that reason we’re giving 101 Quick and Easy Secrets for Using Your Digital Photographs [Amazon]…

A 3 1/2 out of 5!

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