Brian Smith’s Secrets

‘Secrets of Great Portrait Photography: Photographs of the Famous and Infamous‘ from New Riders, an imprint of Peachpit, is a book 30+ years in the making, drawing upon the best lessons learned over the last three decades photographing portraits of the rich and famous, it blends lavish celebrity portraits of a coffee table book with technical how-to insights with a side dish of behind-the-scenes celebrity stories.

The book is based on a talk that Brian Smith has done everywhere from Brazil to Boise including the last two years at PhotoPlus Expo and WPPI, which takes you though all the stages of a portrait shoot from pre-production planning through posing your portrait through perfecting your shot in post-production.

Packed into this 264 page book, loaded with details about Brian’s last three decades of portrait photography, each chapter speaks to a different key to successful portrait photography broken down into spreads share the lessons learned from each shoot and details about the shoot itself.

Featured on the cover of ‘Secrets of Great Portrait Photography’ is a portrait from one of Brian Smith’s favorite assignments ever – a Time magazine shoot of Richard Branson on Necker Island in the Caribbean for a story on Virgin Galactic space flights. This book tells the story behind the shoot and all the details about how it came together from planning to production to post.

Secrets of Great Portrait Photography is available from Amazon, Amazon UK,Amazon Canada, Barnes & Noble, Indigo Canada and in Miami at Books & Books