My current bedtime reading has finally caught up with books that I purchased last year (in paperback). The author Henry Carroll released 'Read this if you want to take great photographs of people' last year and it coincides just in time with my current thoughts and projects of photographing people. I am a big fan of Carroll's plain talking explanations of photography basics and his deconstruction of photographs. I think I have in the pastrecommended his first book 'Read this if you want to take great photographs'.
My current project photography project revolves around shooting people that are looking down at there smart phones while walking. It has occurred to me that I if I am out walking the majority of people are walking zombie like staring at a phone. I am not saying that I am not guilty of this, just that there are scenes of zombie apocalypses from The Walking Dead that look eerily similar. I hope to capture the emotion of receiving a message or news from the facial expression of the subject. I was thinking about using a smaller camera than my DSLR to shoot photo's like that as it is large, but it then occurred to me that perhaps no one would notice. ;-)
I deliberately used the bold font with the word hope. I was told not so long ago that you should never 'hope' when doing a project. During a presentation about actually setting out and planning a project I found it very difficult to not use the word hope. I have thought about this for quite some time now and decided that I am okay with using the word hope. You can plan every detail of any project and still have it go wrong. But you can always hope that it doesn't.
Henry Carroll's books are available on Amazon and I recommend them both if you are starting out or are an experienced photographer. You will not find photography books that are more useful than these for under £10 (although they are £12.95 rrp).