Beyond Portraiture: Creative People Photography

I thought it was a very enjoyable and well-written book that will be helpful for most photographers, especially those intending to sell their work. Mr. Peterson's style is easy to read and seems very sincere and honest in its presentation.

Many years ago I was a budding photographer with no formal training, never really interested in photographing people. Yet people were always getting in the way of most of my shots. Many years later, I discovered that people can add interest to my images by adding scale, a sense of place, or adding to the image's story. Today I enjoy sports photography and I look for ways to include people when composing an image. As a serious hobby photographer with no formal training, this book helped me get more creative when photographing people.Beyond Portraiture is a straight forward book explaining the many aspects of creative people photography. The book is broken down into five main sections. UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE explains a bit of psychology, approaching people, and how to get people to agree to be photographed. WORKING WITH PEOPLE discusses the types of people you should "cast" for your intended images, and how to maintain a comfortable and respectful relationship of varying types of people you may want to photograph. LIGHT details differing types of light and how they affect your images. COMPOSING POWERFUL PORTRAITS offers basic composition rules, backgrounds, movement, camera settings and lens options. PHOTO-EDITING TECHNIQUES is a series of lessons in Photoshop to help perfect your images.It is assumed the reader already has a solid grasp on exposure. If this is not the case, read  Brian Peterson's Understanding Exposure  prior to reading this book. There are short sections discussing shutter speed and aperture, but they are not in-depth enough to form the solid foundation of exposure settings every serious photographer should have. Brian refers to these settings, as he should, in most of the topics.If you shoot in fully automatic mode, you will get something out of this book, but may lack the ability to duplicate the results except by luck. Chances are a camera in fully automatic mode will determine a correct exposure; however the camera can be fooled into setting an incorrect exposure. Plus there is more than one "correct exposure" setting for a scene, but which setting creatively results in the image you want?While the technical details that I have read in this book are commonly known among serious hobbyist, it is Brian Peterson's perspective and experiences that make this book worth reading. His simple writing style is conducive to learning and interesting, opening my eyes to even more possibilities. Even though I look for ways to include people in my pictures, this book will take me to the next level.If you have mastered the subject, this book is not for you. However, if you are a beginner with an aversion to photographing people, or are not satisfied with your portraits and candid shots get this easy to understand book. If you have a general understanding but have room for improvement, this book will help fill in the missing pieces.PROSStraight forward easy to understand bookFull of valuable informationIncludes mention of film and digital cameras where applicable.Full of inspiring imagesCONSWith the discussion of the importance of model releases, a template should have been included.

First, something about me to put the review in perspective. I am a serious amateur photographer and a photography student. I understand the technicalities of f-stops, shutter speed, ISO and White balance quite well. Thus my expectations from a book are not the same as someone who's just casually interested in Photography. Lastly, I'm also a big fan of Bryan Peterson; I've read almost every book he published and am currently taking classes at his online school.Enough said about me, now about the book. Having read his "Understanding Exposure" and "Learning to See Creatively", I absolutely admired the author's ability to explain a complex concept in simple words along with the aid of compelling photographs. Not in this book! I do not know if it's because I purchased a Kindle edition (images were smaller ?) or because portrait photography is not my primary interest, I did not find the book as gripping as I expected from the author. The concepts presented in the book were neither different from the other books I mentioned above nor were they particular to portrait photography. Without giving away the details, all I can say is concepts like "filling the frame", "vertical composition" or "lighting" are generic and not specific to portraiture.I am the kind of person who doesn't put down a book if it's interesting or is from his favorite author. In this case, the later was true. However, I felt that the book is unnecessarily drawn out. Whatever the author wanted to achieve by authoring this book could also have been achieved in much fewer words only if he stuck to the primary subject of the book, portraiture. This book could easily be titled "Beyond Portraiture... and Some More Stuff From My Other Books". I must admit though that I enjoyed reading some interesting anecdotes the author shared from his long photographic career.All in all, if you have read the 2 books by the same author that I mentioned in the start, look elsewhere.

As another bestseller from Bryan Peterson, the book contains a variety of information centered loosely around "portrait". These include tips on exposure, shutter speeds, lenses, post-processing, workflow (as a single page) and so on. The print quality is good. The selected photos are all annotated; some including info on the context as well. The writing style is easily accessible. There are many repetitions; some inevitable, some made on purpose to stress a point. The coverage also overlaps slightly with that of "Understanding Exposure".The author shares his knowledge gathered from the workshops. As a result of this, the reader finds him/herself treated like a participant or a student, which is, I believe, just fine. My only quibble is his frequent talks on "stock photos" as if many if not most of his readers consider earning money from selling their photos. I doubt this.As a reader, I would be happier if portraits from other photographers were also included to discuss certain points and provide info on personal styles. I guess, such a book would not only be better but also be more expensive."Beyond Portraiture" can be a fine starting point for those who want to be able to take satisfactory portraits. Even a starter can enjoy the examples and can reproduce some of them. Just, do not expect the book to carry you to your destination; no book can do that!

Bryan Peterson has published a number of books on photography, some of which are regarded as classics.e.g. Understanding Exposure, Understanding Flash Photography. This one is ok, but definitely not comparable to his best works. His great strength is explaining the technical aspects of photography in an accessible manner, and this book is certainly very easy to understand. However, where I consider it to be less useful than the other two books mentioned is that the content is far less technical, and covers a number of aspects of portrait photography which are fairly simple to understand anyway. In fact, most of the chapters could be condensed into a few sentences each as the concepts described need very little explanation, which was not the case with Understanding Exposure. Possibly this book might be informative to a complete beginner, but it is not a book that will help someone who knows the basics to move to the next level.

Bryan Peterson brings a fresh approach to portraiture in this book. He outlines the basics of portrait photography very well, but, with numerous interesting examples, then takes us beyond what is traditionally regarded as 'portrait photography'.If you only own one book about portraits, this is a good one, because it covers the material well. However, most other portrait books do take the photographer in a similar 'beyond portraiture' direction, and so this is likely to be less revolutionary if you already have such books.This is a good book for someone who has mastered all the basic photographic techniques, and wants something that will challenge and inspire them for some time.Warmly recommended.

I love Bryan Peterson's books, this one is no exception.I did not expect a discussion on the psychology of human behaviour as applied to portrait photography and yet it all made perfect sense. This book along with Bryan's other books has completely made learning photography an enjoyable process for me. Along with his very colourful and inspirational images, his writing style is easy to digest, understand and encouraging to implement with camera in hand.Highly recommended.

Straightforward, no-nonsense approach to portraiture. Clearly written and full of examples of Brian's approach to taking photographs. There is also a section on post processing. I wish all photography books were as well written as this one. Recommended !

Good book. Doest try to teach you how to use a camera but focuses on what it says on the cover. Would recommend it.