How to Photograph Nudes Like a Professional by Ashley Karyl – eBook Review

How to Photograph Nudes Like a Professional by Ashley Karyl – eBook Review

20% Discount on eBook, Use code: darkman

Ashley Karyl is a professional photographer who’s been shooting nudes for upwards of 25 years now. His eBook “How to Photographer Nudes Like a Professional” is a culmination of all his experience during this period of time, and is one of, if not the biggest resource on the subject of Professional Nude Photography.

While there are tons of books out there you can buy for lighting with specific layouts for achieving exact copies of images, or step-by-step lighting procedures, this is not exactly a lighting book, per se’. It is a book on just about everything you would need to know on the subject of Nude Photography. From enhancing your images to getting better and better models for your assignments or sessions, how to act around nude models and avoid the creep factor to interacting with a nude model and making her feel comfortable around you. We all know that great images start with a great model, for without a great model we would have nothing.

Ashley’s book is a conversation between the reader and the writer, as if in a coffee shop, the reader picking the mind of the writer on topics of photography, model selection, lighting, and post production editing. This isn’t for the occasional photographer, it’s for the serious photographer who is looking to better his craft and art of nude photography, with the experience gleaned from Ashley Karyl’s 25 years of experience shooting for some of the biggest names in the industry. That experience would take most of us just as long to put together, if not longer, and is given freely in this eBook.

I myself have implemented some of the techniques and suggestions immediately and noticed a marked improvement in not only my images, but the pleasure I have, when I have a shoot with a great model, models who make the images much, much better. I’ve been working with models for almost 10 years now and there have been quite a few let downs in the past few years. With Ashley’s tips and techniques, finding a competent model is easier than one would expect and the disappointments fewer and fewer. Tips for weeding out the amateurs, who will waste your time, and pulling from the crowd the ones who will show up on time, work, get the job done and do a great job while working with you.

The book also has a nice library of images to look at, with examples of how things are done. Ashley also goes into equipment, and why he uses what he uses, the benefits and differences between different pieces of equipment, besides what he uses, and explains a bit about light color temperature and effects on the images in editing and results.

He talks about where to find good models, what to look for, and gives a list of suggestions to give to the model a few weeks before the shoot and then again a few days before the shoot. Suggestions like drinking plenty of water the day before, and not wearing constrictive clothing, so as not to leave impressions on the body like a bra would leave. No one likes unsightly clothing marks and no one I know likes to edit them out, why make more work for yourself?

The book is full of diagrams and screen shots of lighting and editing screens, and goes well into detail about each aspect of each point he is trying to make, and why. Not many photography books I have read go into detail about why they do certain things, but Ashley does, and usually relating to a certain situation he has had in the past, that he himself had to learn from. Here again passing along to us, the readers, valuable information that can save us countless hours of frustration or dead, unusable shoots.

This book is so full of good information, the list continues to go on into locations for shoots, idea for different locations, poses for shots, hair and makeup tips and ideas, and a check list of things to make sure your model is feeling comfortable and easy. He also gives a list of visible clues to look for, and what those clues can tell you, the photographer what you are actually seeing with the model you are working with. I mean this guy is good.

The book itself is 328 pages long. It took me a while to get through the whole book. Ashley told me to skim through and jump to parts that interested me, but I told him I just couldn’t do that. I found the whole book interesting, extremely informative and well thought out.

I can really appreciate Ashley’s own personal stories he tells in the process of teaching us. I found the stories something I could totally relate to. Each story had a reason for being there, from the inappropriate assistant to the model who wasn’t as thin as she was in her photographs, and how he dealt with each and every adverse situation.

Overall, the book is a gem of a resource, to be gone over and over again. The Only thing I found to be something I would change, was how long the book was, and how many different topics were thoroughly covered. I felt the book could have been broken up into several books covering each subject on it’s own. It took me a while to get through the whole book, but I was able to eventually get through the book.

I will say this for the length and all the topics covered, Ashley does a great job of flowing from one subject to the next, making the flow of the book one of ease. I was glad that I had the whole book, because when one subject was ending, it flowed into the next. This is where I was glad I didn’t have to go buy another book to continue.

Great Book! Highly Recommended!

20% Discount on eBook, Use code: darkman

For more information, including an in-depth list of contents,  go to Ashley’s Site itself Located HERE.

Here’s a few of my own…