Ansel Adams: Half Dome, Merced River, Winter. © Ansel Adams Publishing rights Trust

I have no idea when I was first entranced by the photos of Ansel Adams. There is a wonderful, luminous quality to his work. Small wonder he is America’s best known landscape photographer. Collections of his work would make a worthy addition to any photographer’s library. This is also the time of year that Ansel Adams calendars pop up like snowstorms.

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Orion’s Belt and Sword Scabbard and the Orion Nebula

There is a whole world of things to photograph after the sun goes down. Cityscapes at twilight and after dark. Landscapes in the late evening light. Thunderstorms. Fireworks. And then of course, there is astrophotography. The simple stuff is simple to do (once you have learned how to do them) and all you need are a camera, lens, and tripod. For some astrophotography you will need specialized but not very expensive equipment like the $300 sky tracker used for the photo above. The challenging stuff is hard, complicated, and expensive to do if you want the kind of eye popping photos that you see in Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazines (you should subscribe to one or the other or both if this is your thing). No matter what you want to do, the books below will get you started. And if you just like to look at the night sky, I recommend some books for that too.

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When I picked this book up off the shelf, I couldn’t put it down, at least not until I put it down on the check out desk and bought it. There have been some very fine illustrated history of photography books that have come and gone, but this is far and away my favorite.

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Lightroom & Photoshop: The Essentials

If you are serious about digital photography and you use or want to use Lightroom and/or Photoshop, these books are “The Essentials” when you are ready to move beyond the basics. If you are a beginner or need help with the basics, you should start with The Best Basic Introductions to Elements, Photoshop, and Lightroom.

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Scott Kelby has written some of the best, most readable introductions to Elements, Lightroom, and Photoshop. If you are new to this software, this is a great place to start.

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My Favorite Photography Magazines

There are a lot of photography magazines out there but some are clearly better, more accurate, more useful, and with better images. The magazines that follow are, from my point of view, the best of the best photo magazines.

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Golden Brook. Photo © Tony Sweet

I’ve been reading two excellent nature photography books by Tony Sweet. They are published by Stackpole Books. They choose first class photographers to write an excellent and ongoing series of photography books. I’ve been giving high praise to Stackpole’s photography books for years and I now have two more to add to the list.

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Tom Ang: Digital Photography Through the Year and The Complete Photographer.

Looking for a series of photo projects to inspire you for a full year? Tom Ang wrote a great book with 144 projects arranged by season. He also wrote an excellent companion volume arranged by topics.

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Pika near Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park

If creating stunning wildlife images was easy, everyone would be doing it. Fortunately for all of us, some of the very best wildlife photographers have shared their secrets in some excellent books that will dramatically improve your wildlife photography.

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Wildlife Guidebooks

The first step to photographing wildlife is finding wildlife and one of the best ways to find wildlife is to look at wildlife location books. They will save you hours of frustration by sending you to the best locations to find wildlife.

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My two favorite introductions to landscape photography.

How to Photograph Landscapes by Joseph Lange and Digital Landscape Photography by John and Barbara Gerlach are my favorite introductions to landscape photography.

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Is composition something that can be taught, or is it innate? Probably a bit of both. It is hard to look at photographs by Frans Lanting, Art Wolfe, Galen Rowell, and Dewitt Jones without coming to the conclusion that they were born with some kind of innate sense of composition. On the the other hand, it is clear that photographers can improve dramatically with the right kind of guidance.

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Michael Fulks, the publisher of Apogee Photo Magazine, wrote at an excellent review of Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies and gave the text an A++, the magazine’s highest rating. The review follows.

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After you’ve read my book on exposure and mastered all of the basic, intermediate, and advanced exposure skills and techniques, what book should you read next?

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Jennifer Blakeley does beautiful newborn photography. Her celebrity client list includes Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green; and Jocelyn Towne and Simon Helberg (Big Bang Theory). She is also the founder of Alphabet Photography. A highly respected and award winning Canadian photographer, she has also worked with the Canadian Olympics Gymnastic Team.

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