Show HN: The Bastards Book of Photography

(if you meant for ulterior purposes, no...I don't even explicitly load in jquery, hence the sloppy inline JS)

Obviously, photos I take on my own are loosened up but I lean towards realism. Not using a flash is a deliberate decision to preserve as much of the lighting in a dark scene, even at the risk of underexposure or excess ambient light from a slow shutter speed. Anyway, the book you recommend is not a bad one, but on a brief skim, it's more about the history and place of photography than snapshot technique. I don't disagree that that has worth, it's just not what I'm aiming for in my admittedly brief guide.

Disclaimer: I'm a pro photographer (as in I get paid for taking photos), and I had a few exhibitions.

A few important points, if you want to become a good photographer:

1) My philosophy with most art teachers/book writers is - unless your art makes me say "wow", you can't teach me much. There are many truly great photographers out there. Dan Nguyen is not one of them.

I look at his photos, and most of them are properly exposed, somewhat properly framed, sometimes they have something interesting, but most of the time they are mind-numbingly boring and mediocre.

2) His idea of posting technical details next to a photo is not new, but, most importantly, it's completely useless. I remember when I just got into photography, I was looking at all the cool photos and I really wanted to know the f-stop, the exposure, the ISO that the author used. It took me about a year to figure out it didn't matter. Main reason being - you will never encounter that exact scene with that exact lighting.

Even if you magically come to that same exact spot, same time, same date of the year, magically frame the shot the same way, set all the exact settings, you will NOT end up with the same picture.

3) Photography is art - don't be a fucking robot. Play with the camera settings, they are really trivial. It shouldn't take you more than a day to figure out how aperture, exposure and ISO work.

4) Trying to replicate some cool photo online is a good learning technique, but you don't simply do it by replicating the camera settings.

5) Now the most important point of learning how to photograph well: STOP READING TECHNICAL GARBAGE. Sites like dpreview are full of "photographers" who endlessly discuss their gear, their camera settings, and then you look at their photographs, and they are fucking boring and lack any taste (just to be fair, there are good photographers on dpreview).

Stop it, and look at photos instead. You should look at hundreds of photos a day, that's the only way to develop your photographic taste. And try not to get stuck on user-submitted websites like photo.net or flickr, there's a ton of crap there. Instead seek the best photographers in whatever area interests you - street, portraiture, landscape, etc.

Go to your local store and look at the photo books (not the technical ones, art ones). You will be pleasantly surprised with the quality of photos.

"It shouldn't take you more than a day to figure out how aperture, exposure and ISO work."

I disagree with this from the perspective of teaching this stuff to teenagers (some decades ago now I admit). Probably easier with digital cameras.