Scott Kelby’s “The Digital Photography Book” seems to be the goto reference for those who purchase their first DSLR camera. Even though I don’t have a DSLR camera yet, I was interested in learning more about photography and how to take good photos. This book is organized by use cases: shooting flowers, shooting at weddings, shooting landscapes, shooting sport events and shooting people. It’s very easy to follow, the book consists of several one page tips for each section. Here’s what I learned from reading this book:

• To take interesting photos, you need to find an angle we don’t see every day. For instance, don’t shoot down on flowers.
• Shoot flowers on cloudy, overcast days or after rain. Rich colors of flowers will be washed out by direct sunlight, and you’ll have shadows.
• Take a little spray bottle with you to fake raindrops when taking photos of flowers!
• As a landscape photographers, you can only shoot two times a day: at dawn or at dusk
• You need to use a tripod, cable release or timer to take sharp photos.
• When shooting forest scenes, don’t include the ground in your shots
• Don’t put the horizon line in the middle, place it at 1/3 of the photos (either emphasize the ground or the sky)
• When shooting animals, focus on their eyes, leave some space in your composition
• Don’t try to capture it all, focus on details

Overall, I realized that digital photography requires a lot of investment and sports photography is the most expensive of all. Throughout the book, Scott Kelby keeps suggesting things to buy: tripod, ballhead, cable release, macro lens, memory card, wide angle lens, reflectors, extra batteries, lens hood..

Overall, this is a good read if you just bought a DSLR or want to learn some tricks to take better photos! I’ll keep reading more about photography because I’m still lacking in basic concepts such as ISO, white balance, aperture, focal length, shutter speed and composition. Let me know if you have any recommendations!