Arts & Photography Books - Page 12

Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2 (Apple Pro Training)

Ben Long, Richard Harrington, Orlando Luna

Amazon Price: $32.99 List Price: $54.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Peachpit Press Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $28.64

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Operating Systems -> MacOS
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Fully updated for Aperture 2, this comprehensive book-DVD training combo starts with the basics of image management and takes you step by step all the way through Aperture's powerful photo-editing, image-retouching, proofing, publishing, and archiving features. Aperture 2's new features are completely covered, including a new RAW-image processing engine, a streamlined interface, powerful new adjustment tools, and added integration with Mac OS X and other Apple products for instant web publishing and one-click portfolio syncing. Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2 delivers comprehensive training - the equivalent of a two-day course - in one project-based book. You'll learn time-saving techniques for sorting, ranking, and organizing images, effective methods for correcting and enhancing images, plus efficient ways to display images for client review, apply metadata, update your online portfolio automatically, and much more. Real-world exercises feature professional photography from a variety of genres, including photo-journalism, sports, wedding, commercial, and portraiture. All the files you need to complete the exercises are included on the DVD.

Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers

Christopher Grey

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Amherst Media, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $17.50

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Portraits

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 66 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Visual learner 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

To those with learning disabilities as myself, having suffered a stroke, that use visuals for their input, this book was excellent in all it's methodologies of teaching lighting techniques!

First were the photos themselves, each was shown along with the lighting ratios, and the effect of the various lighting implements used for that particular mood or style of photo being expressed.

Next was a series of photos taken with the same lighting ratio, but with different equipment, showing just how illuminating light can be, and how a Softbox, Umbrella, and what have you can change and influence just how mood and intensity are controlled.

I highly recommend this book for it's excellence in handling the subject at hand...namely Portrait Lighting!

Editorial Review:

Time-tested lighting strategies that will improve the quality of a portrait are detailed in this book for beginning photographers. Terminology used by industry pros is explained, the equipment needed to create professional results is outlined, and the unique role that each element of the lighting setup plays in the studio is explored. Photographers learn how color, direction, form, and contrast affect the final portrait. The concise text, photo examples, and lighting diagrams enable photographers to easily achieve traditional lighting styles that have been the basis of good portraiture since the advent of the art.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Amazon Price: $15.61 List Price: $22.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Basic Books Amazon Marketplace: 96 new & used starting at $6.17

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Musical Genres -> Classical -> Composers -> Bach, Johann Sebastian
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 239 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think.

Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (like undecidability, recursion, and 'strange loops') accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatize concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centering on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers.

The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalizing, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualize difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan

Topics Covered: J.S. Bach, M.C. Escher, Kurt Gödel: biographical information and work, artificial intelligence (AI) history and theories, strange loops and tangled hierarchies, formal and informal systems, number theory, form in mathematics, figure and ground, consistency, completeness, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, recursive structures, theories of meaning, propositional calculus, typographical number theory, Zen and mathematics, levels of description and computers; theory of mind: neurons, minds and thoughts; undecidability; self-reference and self-representation; Turing test for machine intelligence.

2009 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market (Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market)

Alice Pope

Amazon Price: $18.47 List Price: $27.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Writers Digest Books Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $15.99

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Design & Decorative Arts -> Graphic Design -> Commercial -> Illustration
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Yes, you need this. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

While the internet provides writers with almost everything they need to succeed, there is still nothing to be found online that compares to this essential guide. Each year, Alice Pope and her crew deliver the goods, by scouring the publishing world for book, magazine and multimedia publishers that accept work from children's writers. Trust me, every successful agent and submitting author in the children's book field has a dog-eared copy of this book on the shelf. Plus, the articles that accompany the listings are of invariably high quality. A must-have.

Jon Bard
[...]

Editorial Review:

Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market is the top market guide--the bible--for children’s writers and illustrators seeking publication.The 2009 edition of this stalward companion offers readers more than 650 listings for book publishers, magazines, agents, art reps and more. Completely updated, it also contains exclusive interviews with and articles by well-respected and award-winning authors, illustrators, and publishing professionals as well as nuts-and-bolts how-to information. Readers will learn what to do, how to do it, and get loads of information and inspiration.

Modern Architecture Since 1900

William Curtis

Amazon Price: $26.37 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: Phaidon Press Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $24.70

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Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> Building Types & Styles -> Specific Styles

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

It's provoking. It's breath taking. It's excellent !!! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, task to write a review on
Mr. Curtis's book on Modern architecture. Scope of time/space/subject
is just so wide and deep to write down on a single page.

However, the reason why this book stands out is that Mr. Curtis's
writings are based on first hand experience of actual buildings.
One can easily grasp that because he points out nitty-gritty aspects of
Unique construction process and its critical position as "A"rchitecture.

What impressed me personally was his stance on the tectonics of structure.
He gives more credit (or may be it's just my reading of him) on the "visual structure"
Than "actual structure." Issues of veiling, hence, comes to the foreground.
Given his on-going interests in Spanish architects and his recent interviews and essays in
El Croquis, it comes as no surprise.

Mr. Curtis is extremely objective and logical in his analysis and his subject
matter. However, what makes his book extremely tantalizing to read
is that he takes a position that architecture could be more than just a composition of
materials. Architecture should tell more than just its story. The intervention of the materiality and
anti-gravitational nature of higher order puts architecture on a higher dimension

Moreover, through the struggle between architect and client, and through
The clash of public wantings and ambition of an architect,
there is a moment that uplifts normative expression of construction
into a higher and symbolic level. This sort of revealing of invisible or pervasive metaphors
are ultimately achievable only through accuracy and precision

This is only one aspect of the book. Grab it, you'll know what I mean.

Understanding Art, Non-Media Version

Lois Fichner-Rathus

Amazon Price: $92.65 List Price: $102.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wadsworth Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $73.41

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great start for beginner art enthusiasts 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 20 people found this review helpful.

I went to a multimedia school where I took a class on the fundamentals of art & design. Understanding Art was the required text book. Little would I know that I would still be talking about Understanding Art and recommending it for years after that class! (Just don't let my teacher know that!)

The book takes you throughout the history of art, starting from the earliest forms, throughout the middle ages, native traditional art, to the renaissance, to post modernism, to surrealism, to art deco, bauhaus, dada, and everything else. There isn't a form of art that isn't covered and illustrated, which is extremely beneficial, as you truly do learn how art forms evolved throughout the years. Another benefit to this book is that it covers the different medias in art - sculpture, paintings, print, masks, archetecture, and more.

The photographs of the artwork are present throughout the book, and the text gives you insight and background knowledge of each art era that you wouldn't otherwise see. One might usually associate art history text as boring and monotonous, but this is not the case. The text is informative and exciting to read all at the same time.

It's a great book for someone who's starting out in art history, but even long-time art fans will enjoy it too.

Editorial Review:

A market leading text for the art appreciation course, UNDERSTANDING ART combines its strong coverage of art history, with comprehensive coverage and presentation of the visual elements, principles of design, and media to provide a well-balanced discussion of the relevance and beauty of art and the media and methods used to produce art.

An Actor Prepares

Constantin Stanislavski

Amazon Price: $15.61 List Price: $22.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Theatre Arts Book Amazon Marketplace: 74 new & used starting at $10.95

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Performing Arts -> Theater -> Acting & Auditioning
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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Performing Arts -> Theater -> Stagecraft

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

So much mystery and veneration surrounds the writings of the great Russian teacher and director Stanislavski that perhaps the greatest surprise awaiting a first-time reader of An Actor Prepares is how conversational, commonsensical, and even at times funny this legendary book is. After many productions with the Moscow Arts Company, Stanislavski sought a way to introduce his new style of acting to the world outside of his rehearsal hall. The resulting book is a "mock diary" of an actor describing a series of exercises and rehearsals in which he participates. He details his own emotional and intellectual reactions to each effort, and how his superficial tricks and mannerisms begin to disappear as he increasingly gives over his conscious ego to a faith in the creative power of his subconscious. Rarely has any writer on the theater achieved the sort of lucid and inspired analysis of the acting process as Stanislavski does here, and his introduction of such now-standard concepts as "the unbroken line," "the magic if," and the idea of emotional memory has laid the groundwork for much of the great acting of the 20th century. While much excess and nonsense was to follow in the steps of Stanislavski's writings, his original texts remain invaluable, and surprisingly accessible, to any actor or student of drama. --John Longenbaugh

How to Cheat in Flash CS3: The art of design and animation in Adobe Flash CS3

Chris Georgenes

Amazon Price: $39.95 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Focal Press Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $27.44

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Web Development -> Web Design -> Web Graphics
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Web Development -> Web Design -> Flash

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Frustrated by the overwhelming nature of Flash?

Want to get up to speed with the program fast so you can concentrate on your animation?

Need to solve problems quickly to get work done to time and to budget?

Then 'How to Cheat in Flash' is for you!

This book is different from the rest because it shows you, step by step, how to work from the problem to the solution when creating Flash animations, from the viewpoint of an animator who has been commissioned to create a job and is working to a deadline.

It is task orientated; every example shows real life commercial work. So, it's not so much a case of 'what does this filter/tool/option do?', as 'this is the task I've been set - how do I achieve it?' The solution may involve a variety of tools and techniques; it may take many steps to complete, or only a few. The free CD-Rom includes all the files you need to put your skills into practice as you read, and much more!

It's an accessible (conversational in style), practical book and CD package which also provides artistic inspiration, a goldmine of timesaving practical tips, tricks and step-by-step workthroughs. You will wonder how you survived without it.

* Successful, bestselling How to Cheat coverage now available for Flash
* Learn a myriad of tips and tricks based on real life working methods to help you work faster and more efficiently with Flash
* Work from the problem to the solution, gaining the best possible results from Flash

Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters (Wadsworth Series in Communication Studies)

Julia T. Wood

Amazon Price: $70.65 List Price: $101.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wadsworth Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $63.00

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Subjects -> Reference -> Words & Language -> Speech
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Not a reader friendly book. 2 out of 5 stars.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Ms. Wood is intelligent and provides a lot of good information in this textbook. This was chosen for the course I teach before I took the position and if I had my way, we would have found a different book. It is not that the information is bad, it is just that Ms. Wood becomes very repetitive. About half of the first six chapters seem to drag on and most of the time restates the same thing from an earlier chapter or from the same chapter. I like what she has done with discussing multicultural issues, but some of it seems to be patronizing to the reader. I think another edition should be done and making the chapters shorter and more readable (Chapter 1 goes on for 78 pages -- which lost my attention, so I know my students had the same problem.) In the course review, the textbook generally gets a poor or below average rating. I can not give you a recommendation, as I am in the middle of searching for a better option.

Editorial Review:

This best-selling text by a leading voice in the field offers a distinct alternative to existing textbooks for the introductory course in interpersonal communication. This text offers a theoretically unified but pragmatic introduction to the concepts, principles, and skills of interpersonal communication in a multicultural society. INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION: EVERYDAY ENCOUNTERS consistently integrates ethics and issues of social diversity into coverage of both discussions and mastery of skills, and it shows how interpersonal communication theory and skills pertain to students' daily encounters with others. INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION: EVERYDAY ENCOUNTERS pays unparalleled attention to social diversity and emphasizes theories, research, and skills that are anchored in the field of communication.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques

Ben Willmore

Amazon Price: $33.00 List Price: $55.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Adobe Press Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $32.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques has been completely updated to cover the new features in CS3. In a friendly, easy-going style that's long on information and short on techno-babble, Photoshop Hall-of-Famer Ben Willmore guides you through the concepts, features that will truly make a difference in how you use Photoshop every day. He takes you from blindly following step-by-step instructions to an in-depth understanding of how Photoshop works, cutting through the fat to focus on what he considers to be Photoshop's essential features. This full-color book delivers the content in three easily digestible sections: Working Foundations, Production Essentials, and Creative Explorations, and includes a companion CD with bonus chapters and practice images so you can quickly and easily apply the techniques covered throughout. Beginning with the working foundations of Photoshop--the basic tools, palettes, layers, and masks, you'll quickly move on to real-world production techniques, such as how to sharpen scans, correct and optimize images, and use the powerful Curves and Channels features to your advantage. Finally, you'll get to fully explore Photoshop's creative potential by blending and enhancing images, creating collages, retouching photographs, colorizing, and working with filters and layer masks. By the time you finish this book, your creativity and efficiency levels should soar and you'll start to feel like you finally "get" Photoshop.