Lighting & Design for Portrait Photography: Direction & Quality of Light

Worth the read if you want to know how a well-regarded professional photographer lights his subjects in a variety of settings, especially on location. That is the book's strength. He covers various considerations, such as lighting or not lighting the background, exposure level of the background, etc. I liked that Neil provided pull-back photos of his lighting set-ups in most cases. That was helpful. It would have been nice if we had had the focal length used of zoom lenses for each image. The lens' zoom range was supplied, but in most cases, the focal length used was not provided. There is not in-depth discussion of advanced lighting techniques, such as freezing moving subjects or using more than two lights plus occasionally a background light, but Neil did cover well a long exposure situation. As is customary for kindle editions, the images look terrible when enlarged to full screen (iPad retina screen). I don't understand why Amazon doesn't provide higher resolution images in kindle versions of books; the difference in file size is negligible compared to the difference in satisfaction.

I decided to buy this based on the pictures included in the sample pages which i think are good. However the pics from the rest of the book are mostly flat and ordinary. It is more a collection of photos and a brief discussion of how they're shot. There is no underlying strategy about direction and quality. Having read the Joe Mcnally books, this one falls short.

The book is a useful source of ideas but I expected larger and better reproduction quality of photos in the Kindle version, especially since the description said "optimized for larger screens". Even when I zoomed the photos to maximum size on my Kindle Fire, none of them were full screen (some photos were maybe 2 inches long) and they were highly compressed and lacking detail. I could not see many details that the author was talking about. This is not what I want in a professional photography book!

Neil has done it again...There are thousands of books on photography but few that actually have useful information, probably less than 20 I've found.Of those, every one of Neil's writings are in that list of real photography books that teach.This book is more advanced, so read his books in order and do the homework.If you want to really learn the art of photography, READ NEILS BOOKS.I can't say much more

I found Neil’s website with so much free and helpful information and became an instant fan. His information has helped me take my photographs to new levels and this book is totally in the same vein. Thanks, Neil, on behalf of all of us who want to improve our photographic skills. You are a wonderful mentor.

Nice book, and good tips inside. I liked it, and still refer to it now and then.

Neil is just the best: His pictures are outstanding, his teaching straightforward with a slice of humour and the techniques mostly with one (speed)light so that it is replicable for almost all shooters - and he seems a great chap by following his blog: Read Tangents and then get all his wisdom in a neat book!

Neil has been the speaker at our photo Luna couple of times. He is Fantastic. This book is a summary of his other three books that I highly recommend

I'm a reader of Neil Van Niekerk's blog, which is an excellent resource. I bought this book because I wanted more depth than you can expect from a blog post, but I was disappointed. I read it in a single sitting and at the end of it, I felt I would have learnt just as much by re-reading his blog. The problem is that it's a little superficial and you're left wanting a bit more meat.

I've bought all of Neil Van Niekerk's books and would recommend them to anyone interested in photography

Great book by Neil as usual :)

Excellent!

I always love Neil van Niekerk's writing style and his excellent tutorial instructions. His photography style matches my own developing style too, so I know I'll enjoy his example shots and lighting patterns.When I saw this book had been recently published I immediately ordered a copy. I should perhaps have waited until I could study the content because I felt that the title was a little misleading, though maybe confusing would be a better word. I am studying lighting and lighting design in the studio context and that's what I was hoping to see in this book. While there is a section called Studio Portraits, with five chapters, the overwhelming majority of the book is devoted to the use of lights -- both small and large -- on location, in buildings and outdoors.I cannot complain about the teaching in here: it's relevant, accurate and strong, as always with van Niekerk. He covers a lot of topics, and I'd say that this is a good companion to his previous Direction and Quality of Light book. There is overlap of material (though not of specific task designs) with that book though, so you might want just one or the other depending on your needs.Note that this book is not a reference work. It's a series of specific lighting tasks or assignments, each explained and dissected -- with useful asides -- so you can see what was required, what environmental conditions existed, and what was accomplished. Helpful behind-the-scenes shots are provided. The individual lighting designs are grouped into sections covering stuff like "portraits in crappy locations" and "posing and directing".