I browsed through a few books on lighting and flash photography, but found them mostly useless: lots of vague generalizations and spiffy portrait examples, yet I still was mystified as to how flash and studio lighting really worked. It all seemed like black magic.
Light: Science & Magic decodes the mystery. It's easy to overlook on the shelf at your local B&N or Borders; the cover illustration is a little odd, and it lacks the splashy large photos other lighting books are filled with. But it's a brilliantly logical and straightforward introduction to studio/portrait lighting for beginners, standing head and shoulders above anything else I've seen.
The introductory chapter outlines lighting as the "language of photography," and identifies three basic principles that organize everything else. These are: the critical rôle of the apparent size of your light source, the three types of surface reflection that determine the appearance of your subject, and the concept of the "family of angles" that control direct reflections. The remainder of the book fleshes out and organizes these principles into a kind of mental "toolkit" for lighting anything. The authors emphasize that photographic styles and fads come and go but the tools remain constant. They also advise the reader to learn and grow with the gear you already have, before rushing out to buy more toys.
The second chapter present a commendably clear description of the physical nature and behavior of light, and its interactions with objects, as it pertains to photography. You'd think this would be obvious stuff, but the clarity and logical rigor of the discussion were very...er, enlightening. Subsequent chapters delve into the details of the three types of reflection (diffuse, direct, glare) and provide the most comprehensible description of polarization I have ever seen. The discussion is accompanied by simple, lucid diagrams that illustrate the concepts nicely.
