For a lot of us, photography is synonymous with travel. If you're anything like me, you actually go so far as to plan your travel itinerary around the best places and times to get out the camera. I was pretty excited then, when I heard that two friends of Light Stalking were collaborating on a guide to travel photography.Who Are These Guys?Many of you will be familiar with the work of Mitchell Kanashakavich and his great guides that we have reviewed before on lighting and post production in photography. Many of you will also know of or read Darren Rowse's great site over at Digital Photography School. Well these guys got together (Mitchell as author and Darren as publisher) to produce "Transcending Travel: A Guide to Captivating Travel Photography".Mitchell is a travel photographer by trade - he shoots for Getty Images and his photography has appeared in a heap of magazines as well as on book covers and billboards. He also wrote several guides (mentioned earlier) that went on to sell thousands. In short, the guy knows what he's doing! DPS knows how to pick talent when they see it.What's So Good About The Guide?As for the book itself, visually ...

A lot of the most stark and emotive photographic images you will ever see are done in black and white. The black and white collections we have put together here at Light Stalking remain some of the most popular on this site of all time. Little wonder then that many folks continually seek out how to improve their own skills at black and white photography and emulate some of its better practitioners.We were excited to find out then that one of our favorite photography websites has just launched a new guide to black and white photography - The Magic of Black and White (Part II - Craft) by Andrew S Gibson - a follow up to the successful first part (Vision).Who Made the Guide?This guide (and the previous one in the series) are published by David DuChemin who many of you might already be familiar with - he runs the fine website at www.CraftAndVision.com and publishes many great guides to photography as well as a very cool blog.The author, Andrew S Gibson is no slouch himself (check out the images below to see what we ...

As somebody who finds it very challenging to manipulate light in photographic scenes to suit my tastes - especially as I tend to travel light without much lighting equipment, I was quite happy to stumble accross a guide by Mitchell Kaneshkavich called 'Seeing the Light' and devoted to 'making the most of available light and minimal equipment.' Like me, Mitchell is somebody who loves travelling and knows the value of taking as little gear as possible. Lugging around a huge pack even in your own home town isn't fun, but it can be torture overseas. I was therefore hoping that his guide would help me out.A quick google of Mitchell's name revealed that he has been the winner of the 2009 Sony Exposed competition as well as being an excellence award winner from "Color" magazine in the USA. He also shoots for Getty and has been on the cover of or featured in half the photography magazines I read! In short, he knows what he's talking about.The book itself is intelligently divided into three sections corresponding to the three main lighting situations you are likely to find yourself in - The Flash, The Reflector and Natural Light.The FlashMichell covers both ...

A lot of email we're getting suggests that most photography fans feel that they don't know their camera as well as they would like to. Of course that impacts whether you can use a camera to the full potential that it has.To be honest, getting to know your camera is about the most important thing a beginner (or anyone) can do.Just recently the folks over at Digital Photography School released a cool little guide called, "Photo Nuts and Bolts" which is all about getting to know your camera and getting the most out of it.Now let's be clear - getting to know your camera is not rocket science, but it is very very useful to know this stuff by heart and it will help you utilise your equipment to its full potential.Photo Nuts and Bolts not only goes into how image making works, but why. In many cases (such as their great explanation of pinhole cameras) this gives you a much better understanding of a subject. Extremely useful for taking better photos.More importantly, for someone like me, there are a LOT of explanatory diagrams and summary text boxes - this makes it so much easier to understand difficult concepts.I particularly ...