The 9 Books that have helped shape my success as a Photographer | Photography Business Coach
In the ever-evolving world of photography, knowledge, and inspiration are essential to shaping one's success. For photographers seeking to refine their craft and expand their creative horizons, books have been a timeless source of guidance and enlightenment. This collection of nine influential books represents a tapestry of wisdom, techniques, and perspectives that have played a pivotal role in shaping the journey of success for countless photographers.
The 9 books that have helped shape my success as a Photographer can be summarised as follows:
Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear | By Elizabeth Gilbert
“Big Magic is author Elizabeth Gilbert’s guide to leading a more fulfilled life by making creativity, in any guise that suits you, a part of your daily existence. The book offers both spiritual wisdom on how to work with the magical forces of creativity, as well as suggestions on how to create effectively and productively. Gilbert draws on her successful career as a writer, best known for her 2006 memoir Eat Pray Love, and her advice is aimed toward anyone who has a creative bent. In the book, Gilbert outlines her unique definitions around creativity, including the concept of “Big Magic” (or, as we’ll call it for clarity, Creative Sorcery). She elaborates on how to work effectively with Creative Sorcery before describing how to embark on a creative journey and keep your creative momentum up over the long term.”
Becoming | By Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming delivers candid reflections on the life of the first African-American first lady. Offering a window into her personal evolution, Michelle details how ambition, hard work, and embracing her authentic story helped her journey from her family’s Chicago working-class neighborhood to a 47th-floor law office, then to the White House and beyond.
Becoming provides insights into Michelle’s self-determination: She pushed herself to excel in Ivy League classrooms and achieve a prestigious career by age 26, then mustered the courage to swerve off that path in search of greater fulfillment. It details her relationship with Barack—a love story of two opposites—and their challenging quest to navigate family and political life. Through it all, we witness a woman who perpetually strives to become a better version of herself.
What They Didn't Teach You in Photo School | By by Demetrius Fordham, Rosalind Davis, Annabel Tilley
This book won't tell you how to take photographs. It will, though, teach you a much more difficult set of skills: how to be a photographer.
Passing on hard-earned lessons from a successful career in commercial, editorial, and lifestyle photography, Demetrius Fordham shows how to snag the best internships and assistant roles, impress at an interview, develop an amazing portfolio, forge strong relationships with clients, and lay the foundations of your own successful career.
Illustrated throughout with Demetrius' own duotone photography, dramatically typeset to appeal to visual thinkers, and presented in an appealing handbook format, this is the book that will launch the careers of the next generation of photographers.
On Managing Yourself | By Clayton M. Christensen
The path to your professional success starts with a critical look in the mirror.
If you read nothing else on managing yourself, read these 10 articles (plus the bonus article “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles to select the most important ones to help you maximize yourself.
Brave New Mama | By Vicki Rivard
The first year of motherhood, unstitched and singing.
The Places that Scare You | By Pema Chödrön
We always have a choice, Pema Chödrön teaches: We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder. Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of open-heartedness and tenderness. This audiobook teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking Stress Cycle | By Emily Nagoski
This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a simple, science-based plan to help women minimize stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life.
Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?
The Power of Now | By Eckhart Tolle
To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its falsely created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle's extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.
A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | By Stephen R. Covey
Internationally renowned leadership authority and bestselling author Stephen R. Covey presents a personal hands-on companion to the landmark The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has become a touchstone for individuals, families, and businesses around the world. The overwhelming success of Stephen R. Covey's principle-centered philosophy is a testament to the millions who have benefited from his lessons, and now, with The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook, they can further explore and understand this tried-and-true approach. With the same clarity and assurance Covey's fans have come to appreciate, this individualized workbook teaches readers to fully internalize the 7 Habits through private and thought-provoking exercises, whether they are already familiar with the principles or not.
Untamed | By Glennon Doyle
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.
