Photography for Dummies: Missed their audience

I picked up Photography for Dummies for five bucks on a clearance, primarily as a joke coffee table book. I have a dry sense of humor. On my wall hangs a color print of 'A Friend in Need' otherwise known as 'Dogs Playing Poker'.

Sometimes, I'm surprised to find a technical bit of trivia in such a book which impresses me. The book reads like a very lengthy camera owner's manual. Emphasis seemed to be placed more on composing a photograph rather than using the equipment.

This is where the book fails. I think the target audience of this book are people who are intimidated by all the buttons and dials, being further confused by marketing gimmicks like 'Panoramic' format which actually crops your image instead of giving you a wider one. The author rambles on and on about composition, which bored me worse than my college photography classes.

At least in college, I learned something about the equipment and about the chemistry. This book makes references only to those shutter dials with the pictures of a tree, a mountain, a bigger mountain, a runner, and a flower - to confess, I still don't know what those pictures mean or what I'm supposed to do if I want to take a picture of a flower in front of a lake with a mountain the background.

The book keeps the ignorant in the dark about shutter speeds and aperture, making references only to the 'Mode Dial.' This has been the demise of the 35mm format camera and manual focus lenses. What this book needed was less time spent on what to shoot and more time spent on why things work.