What's on your bookshelf?

[back alley]

don't know rachel but nigela lawson can sign my cookbook anyday!

joe

 

[DougK]

Just tune into "$40 a Day" or "30 Minute Meals" on Food Network sometime... boy, I sure derailed the purpose of this thread 🙂

 

[That Guy]

I have a little of everything, but voted "How-to" books. About half my collection of photography books are how-to's. And books are in every room of my house, so I won't bore with what's on which shelf.

Two I'd recommend, especially here on this forum are:

Rangefinder by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz (Guild of Master Craftsmen Publications)
Selecting and Using Classic Cameras by Michael Levy (Amherst Media)

Currently I'm reading "The Photographer's Guide to Using Filters" by Joseph Meehan.

 

[sfaust]

I've seen Rachael on 30 Minute Meals more than once 🙂 My wife tunes in once in a while to pick up new recipes.

Which also reminded me that I have a personally autographed copy of The Living Wild from Art Wolfe. He signed it for me when I took a photography workshop about 3 summers ago.

 

[st3ph3nm]

I've voted for "how to", because although I don't have much in the way of photography books at all, it's them that I'm scouring the local library shelves for, and end up next to my bed all the time. And the odd image collection - recently Cornell Capa caught my eye, and an Aussie who's name now escapes me but does the most incredible portraits.

Cheers,
Steve
(apart from that, it's sci-fi, fantasy, war historys, and beer brewing)

 

[Bubba]

I also voted for "Some of Everything". Most of the books on my shelves are engineering related. Only recently I acquired a few how to books. I just read Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure". It is geared towards using SLRs with auto features, but has a lot of emphasis on the use of the meter. Based on recomendations, I bought the book on Rangefinder cameras by Hicks and Schultz. I was really hoping for a little more from this book. As a newbee to rangefinders, this book was not very useful. I learn way more about rangefinders by reading the discussions here (and you can't beat the price of admission).

Doug, I'm a little jealous that you got to meet Rachel Ray. She is a real cutie. Although she can't hold a candle to the gal I married.

Bubba

 

[Designer]

I've also voted for "Some of Everything", but not a lot for photography, they include architecture, interior design, Hi-Fi audio, home theatre, Coffee making & roasting, etc. Actually what occupy most of the shelving space are those classical CDs.😀

 

[rbiemer]

Folks,
I guess I should say what I've got since I started this poll. Some of every thing. Some that I especially like are: Alfred Blaker's Fiel Photography, A collection of Gertrude Kassebier's(not sure of the spelling) photos--I saw an exhibit of her prints in Kansas City some years ago amazing! Ansel's books, Natascha Merrit's Digital Dairy, Maizenbergs book on repairing russian cameras, a bunch of Kodak books from the 40's&50's and lots of books I've picked up from our local libray's anual used book sale that cover every thing from advertinsing to Rollei TLRs.
Thanks for all the responses! Now I have lots of titles for my local bookshop to find for me!
Rob

 

[Paul Connet]

I have a little of everything, but voted "How-to" books. About half my collection of photography books are how-to's. And books are in every room of my house, so I won't bore with what's on which shelf.

That also pretty much describes my book collection. Lately I have been adding camera repair manuals as they are required to fix the old stuff that is filling my house.

The "how to" books on photo techniques are probably helping some, although each roll I shoot causes me to think otherwise at times.

Keep on snapping I say.

Paul C.

 

[canonetc]

What's on your bookshelf

What's on your bookshelf

I have some of everything, a few how-to books on printing (Ilford's BW workshop), but my main collection involves monographs on photojournalism.

My favorite book, though, is "Dialogue with Photography", a set of fine interviews with Adams, Strand, HCB, Minor White, Eugene Smith, Laura Gilpin, Brett Weston, Imogen Cunningham, B. Newhall, George Rodger and more. It's simply inspiring to the extreme. The interview with Helmut Gernsheim is extremely educational in a historic sense, and in relating to the photographic art-market. A great one to have.

"In Retrospect" by Eve Arnold is another, and "Inferno" by James Nachtway is a superb book to have for a study of in-depth, caring and profoundly moving photojournalism.

I've also collected some works by HCB, including "Man and Machine", "In Moscow" and a dual monograph of HCB and Manuel Alvarez Bravo.

canonetc
Chris

 

[RayPA]

On the subject of photogtaphy, I have a sh*t load of technical reference books, a lot of the Kodak publications that I've had for years, old data guides and a lot of subject specific guide books, those the 8x11 ~100 page format guides that were popular in the 70s & 80s. I have a signed Avedon book, the Arbus book, a Ralph Gibson, a signed Bill Owens and miscellanous compilations and history books. More recent acquisitions are cookbooks with film developer formulas (I mix my own from scratch), and photoshop guidebooks. You get the idea. Too many books!

 

[GeneW]

I'm in the 'bit of everything' camp. Lots of computer books which I'm now thinning out. Keeping the ones on LaTeX though. Some Beat Generation literature I re-read this year -- On the Road, The Dharma Bums, etc -- a book on IR photography, several books on Photoshop, some books by Freeman Patterson, a few classic novels (several Dickens that I've been re-reading), a pile of science magazines (Discover, Scientific American), a pile of books from the library (lotsa detective fiction), the Hasselblad Manual, some art books, and a book I'll always keep: Kernighan & Ritchie, The C Programming Language ...

Gene

 

[kiev4a]

A Speed Graphic Book from about 1945, Princelle's "300 Leica copies." Lots of stuff on history of the American west, especially the Indian wars, several books on the American Revolution and War of 1812, a little on the Civil War, several shelves on WWII and Korea, everything Tom Clancy has written, some Stephen King and various western and science fiction novels.

Favorite books: "Incredible Victory," by Walter Lord, "Red Storm Rising" by Clancy, "The Blue Nowhere" by Jeffrey Deaver and "The Russians" by Hedrick Smith.

 

[RubenBlaedel]

did not get to vote :-( being a publsiher there are to many books on my bookshelf - but rigt now a second edition of a seven volume work on Denmark - first publishesd in 1927 and again in 1962 is my favorite. The author Achton Friis and the illustrator and Painter Johannes Larsen travelled to every little good forsaken place in this small country - to islands with only 10 inhabitants -etc. and made the most wonderfull description of the life of yesterday. The are beautifully crafted - printed and very well written and for the time being they consume all my spare reading time - I had my look out for these for a long time and finally found them at a garage sale at a fraction of their worth 🙂

 

[Honu-Hugger]

"On the Trail of the Contax," volumes I and II; "Zeiss Compendium - East and West 1940-1972," "Zeiss Ikon Cameras 1926-39," "the Contax Way," has anyone noticed a common theme? 😉

A few more historical/reference books (Alpa, Rollei), "The Rolleiflex SL66 and SLX Way," and then a mix of technique and collections. Enjoyed Jim Marshall's "Proof" over Christmas.

 

[Wayne R. Scott]

I have several bookcases. One is devoted to photography, Ansel Adams series of The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. Many Kodak technical reference manuals, dark room books, Zone System, How To's, books on portraits, books on lighting, many others.

I also have books on firearms, reloading, muzzle loading rfle building, archery and bow building, plus camping, fishing and back packing.

One book case has college text books on physics, chemistry, and biological sciences.

Then there is the fiction book case.

And lastly there is the floor which holds my periodicals.

Wayne

 

[StuartR]

I live in a one bedroom apartment, but I have six seven foot tall bookcases completely filled with books. I have far more history and literature than photography, but I have a good amount on the subject. Not to get too much like a library, but my major foci:

Literature: Nabokov, Salinger, Fitzgerald, Pushkin, 19th century Russian poetry and literature.
History -- Russian-Japanese relations (my graduate work). Russo-Japanese War; late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan, Imperial Russia, Sino-Japanese Relations, German and Italian unifications, origins of World War I. Japanese pop culture, Thucydides, Livy.
Music: Shostakovich's life and politics (my undergraduate work), Bach's secular works.
Photography: Ansel Adams: The Camera, Negative and Print. Japanese Photographers -- Eikoh Hosoe, Tomio Seike, Shomei Tomatsu. HCB, Martine Franck, MoMA history of photography (1960s), Aperture Past Forward, Julien Busselle: Printing and Processing. Beyond Basic Photography, Advanced Photography, The Manual of Photography, The Film Developing Cookbook.

Anyway, all that with a bunch more general history, art, architecture, Russian and Japanese dictionaries, literature and so forth. I just accumulate books like I do camera gear...I would estimate that I have over a 1000 books so far, and I am not yet 27...