On a recent visit to the library, I checked out a book by Nick Kelsh called How to Photograph Your Life. What an amazing book. It is technical enough so that I learned some things (like f-stops and film ISO numbers) and conversational enough that I actually understood them.

Kelsh, a professional photographer, set out to create a book for the real-life photographers and took all the photos in the book with his wife’s non-professional camera. So I didn’t spend the whole time thinking about whether or not I could ever hope to take the kind of photos he was showing.

Throughout the book he covers specific types of photo shots a typical person might want to take and then gives tips. So when you want to take a picture at the beach the best thing to do is take it “between the afternoon nap and twilight.” To get a child’s birthday party go for a collection of close up portraits of the guests instead of all group activity shots. And when taking photos of a baby’s birth - go for the mother’s reaction. As he puts it, there is plenty of time to photograph the newborn, but “a mother meets her baby only once.”

This book is a keeper. Unfortunately, it is due back at the library today. I am going to buy it to have a copy for myself. If you want to take better photos for your scrapbooking, it would be well worth a trip to the library. I’ll let you know where I found it.

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