The Street Photographer's Manual Paperback – September 2, 2014

David Gibson's manual is a solid resource for beginners who want to take the next step from admiring street photos to creating their own. The book is clear and concise and full of helpful tips and examples. It may irk some readers (and grizzled veterans) because it mostly eschews technical prescriptions. Gibson admits early that he is not interested in f-stops, ISO or shutter speed and that he often simply sets his camera to "P." It may also irk some readers because it essentially shrugs when addressing the question of mobile phones, as opposed to delineating the advantages (especially in terms of manual control and image quality) of a regular digital camera. Most newcomers and many accomplished photographers, however, will find a lot worth studying here.For me, the biggest shortcoming of Gibson's book is the "school" of street photography, for lack of a better term, he appears to favor: joke pictures, or visual trickery. Two women, photographed sitting next to each other, are made to look like one. A long shadow falls across the face of a police officer standing in a corner, giving him a "mustache." A bent-over old man walks past the windows of a shop, apparently closing, covered with the words "Last few days." To be clear, Gibson describes a wider range of street photos and profiles many different photographers, but this is his book and the visual pun seems to be where his heart lies. The problem is that these can be the most difficult pictures to capture in the real world, but they tend to be the most forgettable -- you get the "punchline" and you move right on, as opposed to lingering and studying the way you would a picture by, say, Alex Webb.This isn't a reason not to order "The Street Photographer's Manual" if you're interested in getting started in street photography. Gibson includes many solid photos, including several strong ones of his own: a great, quiet photo of a British man standing on his bicycle and a brilliant picture of a group of girls all dressed alike to audition for "Annie." So even if he does sometimes fall back on gimmickry (two old people seated behind a sign that says "Lost Children") Gibson includes plenty of other ways to do street photography well.

First a little background. Because of wife's Alzheimer's disease I cannot leave her for the long periods of time needed to take the spectacular photos you see in magazines and books. So I embarked on a little project. Every time I go out for anything, I would try to take one well-composed pictures and post it to my pbase site. This little project has led me to see artistry in common things around me, and that includes people.For this reason I looked forward to reading David Gibson;s "The Street Photographer's Manual". I was not disappointed; in fact I had trouble putting the book down. The book has a sort of a stream of consciousness style; must be much like attending one of his workshops. This style makes it quick reading, interesting and never boring.Gibson spends a bit time on technique, but it is obviously meant for a photographer who understands the workings of his/her camera. Thus most of the book is spent on the more artistic aspects of the subject, with discussion of a number of different aspects.A strong point of the book is that Gibson is generally not dogmatic, with some exceptions, like color and black white should not be mixed and photographs should not be cropped. Rather, a great feature of the book is the length Gibson goes to highlight, in addition to his own work, the work of other contemporary photographers with widely different styles. In fact, Amazon must love this book, because is a good stepping stone for ordering additional photography books, something Gibson recommends.I would love to take a workshop with Gibson. In fact one of the things on my wish list is, once my wife's situation is settled, to combine a London vacation with one of his workshops.

Initially, I debated on how to rate this book. There are great photos, especially more towards the beginning, where the author also lays out a great discussion on the overall subject. The best photos, however, seem to be at the beginning - a lot of the later stuff is more technical, less visually arresting or profound. This is not to say that they aren't good photos - David is a good street photographer, and he uses photos he has taken to illustrate each of the over twenty lessons on different street tricks of the trade. An ambitious plan, not perfectly executed, but it works and it teaches. I've read a lot of things on photography, but the nitty-gritty details and examples in here are pretty exhaustive, and taught me new things.The prose, as has been mentioned, isn't perfect. There are misspellings, poorly proofed sentences and the like, which is a pet peeve of mine. The fact that I'm willing to almost totally overlook that tells you that I feel the book's value is fairly high. Whatever proofing deficiencies there are, I found the content of the book to be well explained, well-linked to the photos, and very informative. If you want real how-tos, with good examples, this book is hard to beat.

I totally agree with how the author wanted to approach the topic, instead of learning via theories, the best way to learn about it is through seeing great work of other photographers and understand why their photos worked so well.The book is only 5 chapters, but through out the book, many works mentioned are shown (albeit most of them belonging to the author himself, but the author also include chapters on other photographers). Some topics can be rather boring, though if you keep reading it, something sooner or later clicks together (at least for me) that helps brings it all together helping you to understand everything.I just wished he had included more photos of other photographers' to prove his point. Also the books is classify in my opinion as a coffee table book, not something to carry around and read on a train as it's really heavy though small.

This was fine. Lots of great photos, but not really very instructive. Lots of philosophical musings and chatting about his fellow photographers.

An excellent book about street photo. A lot of techniques, exercises, tips and tricks. Excellent!

Great book. A present for my husband.He loved it.

This book, along with 100 Great Street Phootgraphs, is essential reading if you appreciate Street Photography.

much recommended to anyone interested in street photography