David Busch's Digital Photography Bucket List: 100 Great Digital Photos You Must Take Before You Die

by David D. Busch

Whether you're a professional photographer or an avid amateur shutterbug, get ready to flex your creativity and enhance your portfolio of images. "David Busch's Digital Photography Bucket List: 100 Great Digital Photos You Must Take Before You Die" provides the inspiration and direction you need to expand your photographic horizons. Filled with 100 inspiring images, this book will help digital photographers like you improve your skills, fill out your portfolio, and maximize your creative vision. Categorized into a variety of genres, each image is laid out in a two-page spread with information on how the picture was taken and advice on how to shoot in a similar situation or setting. More than just a wonderful set of images, the photographs in this book are meant to serve as ideas for potential projects of your own and encourage you to explore new photographic territory.

(Click for larger image) Special Techniques: IR Channel Swapping Urban Life: While a City Sleeps Photojournalism: The Ravages of Time
The World of Nature: The Bounty of Nature Special Moments: A Child's Anticipation Creatures Great and Small: Nature's Symmetry and Patterns

Genres: Photography, Art

276 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2009

Reviews

[Michael Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Photography Bucket List 100 Great Digital Photos You Must Take Before You Die is what its title says it is: a book about 100 types of photos that an amateur can try as part of a growing portfolio. (You can skip the "before you die" part.) For each picture type, David D. Busch gives a background story, shows the picture and discusses (critiques) it, and introduces the technical details and main techniques used to produce the photo. Overall, great for starting photographers such as your reviewer, truly.

I found the general set of topics---capturing the human spirit, special moments, photojournalism, the world of nature, creatures great and small, the fine arts, urban life, and special techniques---interesting. The actual photos were not all within my interest, but I still found a good 10-15 of the photos truly inspiring. Among the pictures I really liked: Eyes as Windows to the Soul, A Quirky Look, An Old Masters Classic, A Child’s Anticipation, Spanning Generations, A Still Life—With Human, The Face of Poverty, The Face of Peace, Spirit of the West, Up, Up, and Away, High Dynamic Range Magic, Nature’s Power, A Winter Wonderland, Back to the Wild, Human/Animal Interaction, Macro Moment, A Majestic Skyline, and In-Camera Distortion.

I found useful the tips and analysis of pictures. They are not very advanced or technically very detailed, but coupled with the camera settings I could grasp their essence and I hope I can incorporate some of this wisdom in my future pictures.

Among the negative issues, I disliked the frequent use of "special techniques"---outside of the section dedicated to this type of photography---in the photo entries selected for this book. While cropping, conversions to black and white, changes in saturation and contrast, and several other techniques are what I would consider ethical photography, I found the frequent use of image composition, deletion of annoying parts, and even inserting of objects in the image things that I would not like for my own photos (pourvu que ca dure). The juggler with four balls mid-air, one of which was inserted as a trick object, was rather annoying. Not all such pictures were breaking my ethical compass---as a counter-example, A Winter Wonderland combines far and close shots into one great image of the winter---so perhaps I am just unfair.

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what I was expecting but I find the notion that there's a prescriptive list of cookie-cutter images every photographer needs to make to be extremely off-putting and almost offensive as an artist. Can you imagine telling a painter he should do that? I guess I also thought that the list would be more inspired/inspiring than "the dignity of age", "a child's anticipation", "the face of poverty", "hands at work", "anthropomorphic animals". Such a list is trite and reduces any of my existing work that meets the criteria of one of these shots to something lacking imagination or originality.

[Katharina · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Every cliché in the book" has never been so true.... 95% of the photos I didn’t like for that reason. It seems the book must’ve been from early 90ies just from the over-the-top style and eye-rolling clichés. The nature and artsy photos were better in general, though I wouldn’t put HDR and magic in one sentence. The photoshopped ones looked more like school projects than something a professional would do...
In the end, the book was an inspiration though – an inspiration to do it better.