Review | A Beautiful Mess: Photo Idea Book
My thoughts:
If you’re familiar with Elsie and Emma’s blog, A Beautiful Mess, then you know their style, their excellent photography, and their creative (and sometimes way out of the box) ideas. If you’re not familiar with their blog, I highly recommend you go check it out RIGHT THIS MOMENT.
The minute I heard that Elsie and Emma were writing a photo idea book, I hit the pre-order button. As a fan of their blog already, I knew I would like the writing style, the photography, and the ideas. I wasn’t disappointed by any of that in the book. The writing style was exactly in the voice of Elsie and Emma, but with more of the “polish” a book editor might give (verse a blog), the photography was right on point, and the prompts are fun and creative. Best of all (for a designer!) the book is beautifully laid out—It does a great job of balancing the whimsical style of A Beautiful Mess and a nice, clean, graphic layout. Kudos to their book designer.
What I was really excited about when I read the description of the book was that they would be giving ideas for photographs as well as some photography tips. As a professionally trained photographer, I didn’t think that the “tips” would really be where I would get my value from the book, but I’m always willing to learn something new—and I did learn a few quick tips—not only for “real” (with my camera) photography, but tips for iPhoneography. No one can deny that these ladies are incredibly talented with a camera, and I’ll take any advice that I can from them!
I’ve read some complaints about the photography prompts and ideas – people complained that they’d maybe “seen them before” or felt that they were “too obvious”—but I love that this book caters to photographers of all skill levels—those new to even a camera phone who want to document more of their lives, to those who have fancy DSLRs that might just need a creative jump start. And yes. I’m sure plenty of these ideas are on Pinterest, other blogs, or even on A Beautiful Mess. But what I love about idea books —and this book in particular—is that it’s a focused topic all contained within the same book. I don’t have to go searching on Pinterest for 95 new photography tips and ideas on 45 different blogs—they are all contained here… beautifully designed and photographed.
Overall— this photo idea book is totally worth picking up for all sorts of inspiration. I highly recommend it for road trips to vacation spots—you’ll love flipping through the book for hours while you’re riding in the car, and you’ll have all sorts of ideas of what to capture when you get there!
