What's on your bookshelf?

[rbiemer]

Totally self serving(I need some good ideas) poll: what's on your bookshelf? I thought this would be easy--HA was I wrong. My distinctions are abitrarily based on whats on my book shelf. Its a two part poll. The chioces I listed and in comments your favorite book.
Rob

 

[modsoul]

I voted for some of everything. But actually I don't have any "how to" books. I was taught by my father and friends. I also like to discuss with friends.

Cheers,
Max

 

[JohnM]

Everything and anything is on my bookshelf - how-to's, image collections, Zone System book, PhotoShop for Dummies, (me being the dummy), prints, pictures, Pop Photo magazines, a few Shutterbugs, a Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County collection - heck, there are actually cameras on my bookshelf. There's a Nokton 50 and a 400mm Vivitar manual focus lens taking up a corner with a half-dozen rolls of 400UC Portra.

A Jim Calhoun bobblehead doll keeps an eye on the whole mess. It's an organizational disaster.

 

[back alley]

the best books, that i have read, about shooting were edward weston's day books.
no technique stuff, just life stuff.

i also enjoyed jim hugh's book about gene smith. another man obsessed about shooting.

 

[24x30]

Maybe I should have done 'Some of everything', but the main part of the books are in the cathegory 'Image Collection'. So I choose this cathegory.
My favorite image collection books (at the moment) are the books from Winston Link.
The favorite HowTos are the books from Tim Rudman (Toning Book and Lithprinting).

But there are so many books ... I would like to see on my bookshelf. 😉

/rudi

 

[sfaust]

Pretty much of a little of everything on mine. Lots of technique and image collections. Hardly any history, and just a few theory, and not a one on 'Verbal discussions of a visual discipline'.

Perfect timing on this for a secondary reason. I just picked up "the man, the image & the world" about HCB. 400+ pages packed with multiple images per page. A persons life work all laid out for us. Once I get through it, I'm more than happy to lend it to others if they pickup the shipping costs. Or even pass it around through a small circle, then back to me. If you are interested, send me an e-mail and I'll get back to you once I finish it myself.

 

[denishr]

Some of everything. Mostly image collections (Taschen editions mostly), but also AA's trilogy, McBroom's Bluebook, "Graphic Graflex Photography", and the one that pushed me on the road of no return - Ivor Matanle's "Collecting and Using Classic Cameras" 🙂
I have some technical/technique books, like "Way Beyond Monochrome", and some others. Always trying to improve the technical aspects, darkroom skills...
Of the image collections, one of my favorites is "Horst: Portraits". Also have some howto books - but relating to camera repair, by Tomosy 😉
And photography magazines - mostly French "Photo"...
Pretty eclectic, I guess..

 

[Azinko]

Hello,...this is my first post so please be gentle!!

lots of photo books on my shelves aquired over the years but the one I keep coming back to is the smallest and cheapest of the lot, namely 'Successful Photography' by Andreas Feininger. Ironically my copy was bought at a public library sale for 20pence as the librarians considered it hopelessly outdated. Althought it was first published in 1954 it has an oracle like quality which is quite timeless so that one can open it at more or less any page and find a simple instruction for part of the photographic process which will also be applicable to life itself!

 

[back alley]

new guy alert!

welcome bob. we are always gentle here, it's the rule.

you awakened a memory and i immediately went into my little storage area. when i first started out in photography i read alot and there were a couple of books that had a great influence on me. the one you mentioned by feininger and also his 'the complete photographer', both excellent.
another was 'the craft of photography' by david vestal.
i seem to like those that are a bit of the beaten track mostly.

i must crack them open again.thanks bob!

joe

 

[modsoul]

Denis,

I love Taschen books too. They are nice and economic. Phaidon books are too expensive sometimes.

Max

 

[wierdcollector]

My computer area has 5 shelves, mainly full of Kodak workshop series, Jason Schneider, Michael Freeman, John Hedgecoe, Brian Coe, Thomas Thomosy, Carl Shipman, Feininger, Petersen's guides, Hasselblad publications, Lord of the Rings, Rambler manuals,muscle car books, Boris Vallejo drawings, Antique guides, Birding guides, McKeown's (of course) Camera guides and plenty of guide books to most camera manufacturers lines (except the dread auto focus and digital, ewww.)

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The bookshelf in my room: The Time/Life series on Photography, Circa 1973; Nikon/Nikkormat Manual; Leica Manual; Walther Benser Colour Photography and Colour Again; lots of old 1930's to 1950's photography technical and technique; a shelf of old Pop/Modern Photo mags; ...

Computer Books: Assembly Language, FORTRAN, C/C++; Photoshop v3; WORDSTAR manuals (Still use Wordstar on embedded systems), ... My day at work yesterday: generating machine code to read/write the "modern" control registers on a P6 (and Later) and access the machine specific registers from real-mode (embedded realtime system) because the Macro Assembler could not generate the new opcodes. There is life after Management.

The IBM Autocoder manual is in the basement...

 

[oftheherd]

Some of everything but not much of anything. After a house fire 12 years ago I just couldn't get into the mood to try and replace all that was lost. Too much of it would be hard to impossible to find.

Books on computers (I'm a computer person wannabe), novels, and religious books. Just not a large collection of anything anymore. 🙁

Brian, if I can find them (if my wife hasn't thrown the out in frustration), I think I have some old IBM pamplets I rescued from BAH several years ago. If you need Modula II, I have that on 5 1/4 disks. I don't think I am ready to give that up yet (still may want to play with it some day) but would let you use it any time if you needed it.

 

[Krasnaya_Zvezda]

Also voted for "Some of Everything". The bottom shelf of the display case for my cameras is the bookshelf for photography books, containing the Time/Life photography series ($2 per volume at the half-price bookstore); "Rangefinder: Equipment, History, Technique" by Hicks and Schultz; two books about Man Ray; "Naked City", a collection of Weegee's stuff; a biography of Capa, and one of Bourke-White; one about Magnum; a few "How To's"; a few of the "history of" category; and a few of the Aperture series, HCB, W. Eugene Smith, Man Ray, Weegee.
And of course, I have a box or two of older stuff in the garage that I can't fit on the shelf (and I won't toss, either.)

 

[taffer]

😱 I still remember Modula-2 :_)

In my case, just a bit of everything, except the Princelle book, that is :bang:

And Welcome Bob 😀

 

[peter_n]

Welcome Azinko from good old Blighty! 🙂

I too have a bit of everything, my favorites are are four year's worth of the mag Leica Fotografie from the 60's/70's. Great pics and articles.

I picked up a book around this time last year called Red-Color News Soldier by Li Zhensheng. It's a scarcely credible tale of (a) the bravery of the author in taking and hiding so many excellent pictures inside Maoist China during the 60's, and (b) the behavior of ordinary people during the Cultural Revolution in that country. Amazing book.

And the author used RFs and TLRs! 😉

 

[digitalox]

I saw that book recently at the museum book store - very interesting book.

I voted for some of everything too.

Like many, lots of programming books.

HCB. An old Life Photography series of books, I piced up the whole set for about $10 at the used book store. Lou Reed - Emotion in Action, Masterclass in Photography, Lartique, a few more i can't remember. I usually keep my out at the local used book stores and grab them there. Every once in a while they get really good ones, usually are pretty cheap.

 

[Roman]

A few favorites:
Ansel Adams' Autobiography;
Barry Thornton 'Edge of Darkness'
Tim Rudman's books about toning and lith printing;
Richard Avedon's 'In the American West' (OK, I only have that on loan from the library, too expensive... just like the Sebastiao Salgado books I also like!)

Roman

 

[l.mar]

For Christmas many years ago, I got a copy of Miller and Brummitt's "This is Photography (Its Ways and Means)" -- which was originally written in the early 50's. My parents bought it for me, gently used, to help me with the basics of B & W darkroom work. It also had a section on camera selection, featuring the Graflex "doghouse" plate/rollfilm camera as a "typical" single lens reflex, and also referred to a Retina as a "continental-style miniature camera." It also featured Kodak TLR and box cameras --- apparently one of the authors was affiliated with Eastman, although the book was not a Kodak publication. I still have the book, and leaf through it when trying to figure out what "fast" film to run through my 1940's/50's folders (no Delta 1600 back then!)

 

[DougK]

I voted "some of everything", but it's mostly science fiction and fantasy novels. There's also a few remnants from my days as an ancient history student, Shakespeare, Beowulf, some computeer reference tomes, and several photography how-to books, but the centerpiece of my collection has to be a personally signed cookbook by Rachel Ray that I got at a book signing/lunch I went to today (yes, she's as much of a sweetie in person as she is on TV, went around the bistro and talked to everyone who came for several minutes each... sigh).