Neil van Niekerk is a New Jer­sey wed­ding pho­to­grapher and a mas­ter of flash. I’d recom­mend his Tan­gents blog — there are lots of edu­ca­tional art­icles (and pretty pic­tures too). Neil has two books: “On-Camera Flash Tech­niques for Wed­ding and Por­trait Pho­to­graphy” and “Off-Camera Flash”. We’ve vis­ited Neil for a train­ing ses­sion — if we ever get the chance we’ll host some­thing in Scot­land.

Mas­ter Light­ing Guide for Por­trait Pho­to­graph­ers is a rel­at­ively new addi­tion to my book­shelf — I went look­ing for a suit­able ref­er­ence book for one of my stu­dio por­trait­ure light­ing class stu­dents and this appears to fit the bill. Very read­able with good examples and dia­grams.

I’ve had the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of “Light Sci­ence and Magic” on the shelf for a while — prob­ably under appre­ci­ated. This is def­in­itely a great light­ing ref­er­ence (cov­er­ing more than just por­trait­ure).

Light­ing for Por­trait Pho­to­graphy is worth own­ing as a ref­er­ence on por­trait light­ing. It use­fully con­tains lots of sample shots with dif­fer­ent mod­i­fi­ers, so you can see the dif­fer­ent effects on a sim­ilar shot.

Bruce’s “Fash­ion Pho­to­graphy” cov­ers a lot of mater­ial — as much about the fash­ion busi­ness as about shoot­ing.

Inspir­a­tion

Light­room and Photoshop

The Adobe Pho­toshop CS5 Book for Digital Pho­to­graph­ers (Voices That Matter)