Molecularist

I’m halfway through a really cool book on photography called Sharing Digital Photos, the future of memories, by Dane M. Howard.

Dane, a designer at Microsoft, has written a great book that covers many aspects of digital and traditional photography – teaching about how to manage digital photos, tips on how to get the best out of your photos, and even some technical aspects of photography. He manages to do it with a light style, plenty of examples and great photos, and without getting too geeky. He also brings in other photographers to give some pointers, kind of like case studies.

Yes, of course he mentions Microsoft products, but he also mentions some other products. He doesn’t mention Microsoft products so much that you think that’s all he’s doing (though in some parts, he’s just bearable). The book is so well designed and written, and the content is so rich, that it was easy to overlook the product plugs.

The level of the subject matter is for the serious home digital photographer, someone who will devote a considerable amount of time to edit, organize, post, and produce digital photos. That is a bit more elaborate than I think the typical Nokia Lifeblog person would want to do.

While it’s fine and dandy to manually do everything with your photos (as is the non-Lifeblog world, anyway), I don’t think everyone wants to get that involved. I think Lifeblog takes a lot of the drudgery out of organizing and browsing digital images, still leaving room for those who want to do more.