Regardless of whether you are just starting out or you’ve been in the photography business for years, it is important to stimulate your mind, replenish your motivation reservoir and improve your skills. One of the best ways to do that, is reading (or listening to audiobooks). The following list includes a few of the books we’ve read this year and a few that were suggested by our readers. Most are not even photography books but are more creative, inspirational or business oriented. We would love to grow this list so please submit your favorite books that inspire, motivate and educate using the form at the bottom of the page.
Photography
Going Pro: How to Make the Leap from Aspiring to Professional Photographer
Going Pro is the essential guide to leaping successfully into any genre of professional photography. Industry powerhouses Scott Bourne and Skip Cohen share invaluable advice on defining your niche, putting together a portfolio, pricing and showing your work, marketing, positioning your brand, and, most important, building an online social media platform from the ground up.
For the Love: An inspirational Guide and Adventure into Photographing Your Family
A personal and inspirational guide and adventure into photographing your family and inviting time to breathe, time to love, and time to embrace what you have. An invitation to explore your creativity, whilst also recording the moments that your heart tells you that you must.
‘For The Love’ is for anyone who loves photography, as it is a gentle reminder that we need to slow down, record, and remember these precious days.
A guide to the next big thing in wedding imagery that shows wedding photographers of various levels how to evolve past photojournalism to the higher-end, more stylised look brides want, with specific design, composition, posing and lighting techniques that makes any bride’s wedding photos look like the pages of a glossy lifestyle magazine. Thanks to Abundant Life Images for the suggestion.
Motivation/Inspiration
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves and most inspired and achieve at their highest levels. With a wry sense of humor, Ken Robinson looks at the conditions that enable us to find ourselves in the Element and those that stifle that possibility. Drawing on the stories of a wide range of people, including Paul McCartney, Matt Groening, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Bart Conner, he shows that age and occupation are no barrier and that this is the essential strategy for transforming education, business, and communities in the twenty-first century.
In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown, shares ten guideposts on the power of Wholehearted living—a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness.In her ten guideposts, Brown engages our minds, hearts, and spirits as she explores how we can cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough,” and to go to bed at night thinking, “Yes, I am sometimes afraid, but I am also brave. And, yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging.”
Have a Little Faith: A True Story
Have a Little Faith is a book about a life’s purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man’s journey, but it is everyone’s story.The book follows the spiritual journeys of three men—a suburban rabbi, an inner-city pastor and the author himself.
