This past weekend I made an unplanned book purchase, but one that I was happy to make. The purchase began with a phone call from a fellow photographer. She was at Barnes & Noble and recognized one of my images on the back of a book. It’s always neat to find one of my stock photos “In the Wild” so I figured that I would stop by the store sometime and take a look at how it was used.

While headed to a Father’s Day lunch with my daughters the next day, we found ourselves next door to Barnes & Noble so we popped in to find the book. When I found the book I was pleasantly surprised. In addition to the single image on the back cover, there were six other uses of my work inside the book. That was great to find, but what really caught my attention was the quality of the book. Not only was the photography top-notch (heh heh), but the content was very good – good enough in fact that I coughed up the cash to add this book to my library.

The book is titled Digital Wedding Photography Secrets and is written by Rick Sammon. I have listened to Rick on the PhotoFocus podcast, but had never read one of his books.

The information presented in the book is very thorough and informative. Rick covers nearly every aspect of what it takes to photograph a wedding – from planning to shooting to processing. The information is presented in a way that it is usable to photographers regardless of skill level. After leafing through just a few chapters I knew this was a book I wanted to have on hand to use as a reference manual. As anyone who photographs weddings has probably experienced, there can be a fear of missing out a key detail in the craziness that can happen when shooting a wedding. A brush-up from a book such as this before heading out to photograph the event can be a valuable tool in ensuring that you don’t miss a thing.

The book can be found at Amazon.com for under $20. If you’re a photographer that shoots weddings or are thinking of heading in that direction in the future, I’d definitely recommend picking up a copy for your library.

…and once you have it, be sure to look for my images 🙂