Book review: Shoot to Thrill on digital photography

Digital photography is one of the hottest book topics around and everyone is writing a book about digital photography. I got a review copy of Derek Pell’s Shoot to Thrill. There is some value here for writers who wish to incorporate photos into their queries and submissions. However, I’m not inclined to recommend the book. Shoot to Thrill could have been more thrilling.

Mr. Pell, who says he has written some 20 books, writes this one in his version of a detective mystery style. It’s too trendy, reaches too hard to be funny, and is fairly offensive to women, all at the same time. The first thing I noticed is the goofy jargon.

Nobody move – you’re surrounded. Must be a couple hundred books on digital photography starin’ at you….There’s nothin’ but sunny-side-up o the subject….believe me I’ve read ‘em all.

By the end of the first graff, I was done with apostrophes in place of missing letters. The rest of the text is liberally sprinkled with references to “you guys” and “dames.” To all appearances, women are not capable of reading or of taking good photographs. The pity is, if you wade through all that, there are good tips in the book, especially for those who want to shoot photos to illustrate their writing. Pell was evidently a shooter for UPI and other outlets for some time.

His images are engaging. The chapter called Gestures is particularly effective – showing how to catch action and expressiveness.

It’s conceivable that some readers will find this book funny, and that’s cool. But it seems the important information and the point of the non-fiction how-to book are lost in a bigger-than life parody. You can’t be all things to all people. Adding humor to non-fiction is great. Drowning readers in a laborious stretch to bury content in style makes the author completely self conscious. He’s lost his way and his point.

If you have a quirky sense of humor, you’re a macho kind of guy or just curious, give the book a look and let me know your take on it. One of the most valuable sections is the appendices where there’s a good list of resources and references online and off. You can find them listed, Pell says, at  ZoomStreet, his web site.  All you dames out there – pass on this book, maybe. The website is better than the book.

Shoot to Thrill
Derek Pell
isbn: 13-978 0 1231 4240 7
$24.99 U.S. and $29.99 Canada

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