The Portrait: Understanding Portrait Photography by Rand & Meyer

Understanding Portrait Photography by Rand & Meyer

O’Reilly has released a new book, The Portrait: Understanding Portrait Photography by Glenn Rand and Tim Meyer (Rocky Nook, $34.95 USD), a thorough and balanced textbook on the modern techniques and practice of portrait photography.

In the new book, Rand and Meyer have avoided the single-style viewpoint common to so many books on portraiture and have crafted a definitive resource for professionals, as well as students and avid amateurs, wishing to advance their skills in this discipline.

The following topics are covered:

Quality of light and the portrait
Ambient, continuous, and strobe light sources
Understanding light modifiers and enhancers
Mastering lighting ratios
Importance and selection of backgrounds
Extensive coverage of lighting setups
Understanding light meters and metering in portraiture
Lighting patterns on the human face
Facial analysis
Composition in portraiture
Eliciting the appropriate expression
The fine art portrait
Portraiture for the masses

Dr. Glenn Rand’s photographs are in the collections of more than two dozen museums and public collection in the United States, Europe and Japan. He is the program director of the graduate program at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California.

Tim Meyer is a passionate photographer, educator and writer. He currently serves as the Portrait Division Chair at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA while continuing to operate his custom portrait and wedding business.

[Site: O’Reilly]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.