101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from the Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century by Matthew Bamberg is a photography technique book that is unique in it’s focus and it’s teachings.

About the Author

Matthew Bamberg began his career in the arts as a graduate student at San Francisco State University in 1992. His work in the visual and media arts included video production and software applications. He completed his M.A. in Creative Arts in 1997. After being a public school teacher for 14 years, Bamberg became a photographer and writer. He began to photograph for the articles he was writing while working for the Desert Sun and Palm Springs Life magazine. He has traveled the world, photographing in the most remote of places from Burma to Bolivia. His photographs have appeared in international magazines, galleries, and retail stores. This book is part of the Quick and Easy Secrets photography book series.

About the Book

Taking a different approach to teaching photography this book attempts to show you how to recognize and incorporate the techniques used by some of the great master photographers of the last century. 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from the Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century focuses on one photographer per chapter giving a brief biography that highlights life experiences that influenced his/her work and provides descriptions of a few of the iconic images he/she produced. You’ll find key photographic elements that apply to those works.

This photography techniques book attempts to give you a rundown on how the master photographers acheived award winning images but doesn’t quite produce the desired results.

The problem is that the actual photographs by these master photographers are not in the book.  Yes…getting the copyrights to publish those works is a rather expensive endeavor, but without the images the descriptions and stories seem to fall flat.

There are a few positives in this book.

The idea that you learn how to recognize light, shadow, composition, narrative, and symbolism and how they play in the story telling aspects of the still photograph through the eyes of such photographers as; Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Robert Mapplethorpe, Berenice Abbot, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many more could entice many photographers to pick up this book.

The concept and idea behind this book were fantastic.  The execution…not so much.  Can you learn better photography from this book?  Sure.

But make no mistake, this book doesn’t teach you how to use your camera in a technical sense (nothing wrong with that BTW). It attempts to teach you how to use your eyes, mind, vision, and creativity in conjunction with your camera to create compelling photographs. The camera becomes an extension of your creative vision.

The biggest downside (again) is that the actual images of the master photographers was not used and I honestly cannot imagine how much that endeavor would have cost the publisher, but they needed to be there alongside their descriptions.  The long URLs simply do not work if you’re going to print a book on the subject matter.  I’m not going to read this book at my computer only.  I would like the option of taking it on the road, airplane, camping, whatever…but not tied to the computer.

Bamberg does a decent job (at times) of incorporating his own images in the styles of the masters and telling his readers how he was able to re-create those images, but I can’t really see that our author succeeds.

Perhaps this idea would have been better suited to a website or e-course where you could click the links to see the images being described.

We’re giving this book a 2 out of 5

You can get a copy of 101 Quick and Easy Ideas Taken from the Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century at Amazon.