All of the photos in Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies.
The digital contact sheet above has all 271 photos in Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies. Curious about the statistical breakdown of the photos, I gathered them all together and went through them one by one to make note of the location, the type of photo (portrait, landscape, etc), camera used (film or digital), and the year each photo was taken. Obviously, the photos reflect the content of the book. You would expect to see wildlife photos in a chapter on wildlife photography. But I thought the photos might say something about my general photographic preferences as well.
I have an obvious preference for landscape, nature, and people photography. In the exposure chapters that did not depend on a particular genre of photos, nature and people photography photos are the most common.
Sports photography is the least common. Had this book been written in the “newspaper black and white film” days when I did sports photography for the Yukon Review, there would have been a lot more sports photos in the book. Despite a lot of B&W negative film in my archives, not a single photo shot on black and white film made it into the book.
Speaking of photos that made didn’t make it in to the book, in my enthusiasm I wrote a 500 page book with almost 600 photos. By the time we cut the book down to its allotted number of pages (384), over 300 photos went by the way side.
My transition to digital photography occurred in 2003. That was the first year that a digital file had the image quality necessary to please the photo editors that I worked with. Before that I shot slide film for everything except weddings and some portrait assignments. I used slide film because I preferred it to negative film, and most magazine and book editors preferred looking at a sheet of slides. There are only 2 photos shot on color negative film in the book, a photo of a bride and groom, and a photo of a dragonfly.
All but three of the chapters have a mix of film and digital photos. There are two “all-digital” chapters, the chapter on accessories and the chapter on people photography. It wasn’t planned that way, it just happened. There are film photos of people in the other chapters of the book. The one “all-film” chapter is on flower photography. That wasn’t planned either, it just turned out that way. There are digital flower photos in other chapters of the book.
The camera list (both film and digital) shows you don’t have to have the most expensive cameras to take good photos. It is still about the photographer, not the cost of the gear. It is true that a camera with limited features can hold you back, but you don’t have to have an high end camera to create wonderful images.
The photo locations in the book mostly have to do with where I have lived and have family and friends. I lived in Michigan and Colorado, I have family and friends in both states, and both states are favorites of mine when it comes to photography. It is not surprising that both states are high on the list. I also have family and/or friends in several other states that are on the list.
I created 65 photos specifically as illustrations for the book. You can see them in the middle of the above contact sheet. They include photos of equipment, color charts, camera histograms, flash fall off, and the series of exposure demos of the white house. That accounts for the high number of photos in Ohio, my current home. All of the other photos were created in the normal course of my photographic pursuits.
In general, there are more photos as you get the closer to the time I wrote the book. No surprise there. The longer we shoot, the better we get, so most of our favorites will be more current. But I some of my favorite photos are still from my film days.
Some day I may go back through again and look at focal lengths, apertures and shutter speeds. If I do, I will let you know.
Links
You can see a larger contact sheet here, look at the statistical breakdown of the photos here, and learn more about Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies here. You can buy it at Amazon.com.