Six Books All Creatives Must Read

Most good photographers also have a wide and varied book collection to draw from when they need it. If you want to grow as a creative, then you should seriously consider some, if not all, of these book suggestions.

When you think about it, a good book is a screaming bargain. For the same cost of a few overpriced coffees, you can purchase something that could change your life. The right books can help improve your photographic practice, teach you about business, or even give you much-needed motivation to shoot more. You could always hit Google or Amazon to find out what's popular, but a personal recommendation will always beat some website's algorithm.

This week, the team over at the Futur is back with some highly recommended books for creatives to read. While none of these suggestions are directly referencing photography, they're all still worthy of a place on any photographer's bookshelf. What I like about this particular video, is that each book featured has its key concepts summarized as well as explaining how the suggested title has helped that particular creative in their practice. Some of the issues raised in these books include how creatives can make business work, learning about the origins of particular colors, to building a powerful brand.

So, if you need a jolt of something to help your creative practice or maybe could do with a gift suggestion for one of your photography friends, check out this video.

Have you read any of the books recommended? Care to share some of the titles that have helped you most as a photographer? We'd love to hear from you on the comments below.

Lead image by alexsoneday, used under Creative Commons.

Paul Parker's picture

Paul Parker is a commercial and fine art photographer. On the rare occasion he's not doing photography he loves being outdoors, people watching, and writing awkward "About Me" statements on websites...

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13 Comments

"Blood and Champagne" is my favorite. It's a biography of Capa — not educational, but very fascinating to read.

Can someone type all six books?

Can we get the tl;dw version please?

You can always click on the video and look at the description. Doesn’t take much time.

0:39 - Melinda Livesy - The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber - https://amzn.to/33719dG

1:26 - Ben Burns - Burn Your Portfolio by Michael Janda - https://amzn.to/2QHWDzK

2:43 - Matthew Encina - Zag by Marty Neumeier - https://amzn.to/2XCGkWg

3:55 - Greg Gunn - The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair - https://amzn.to/2QJcUVi

6:02 - Dot Lung - Give and Take by Adam Grant - https://amzn.to/35rX6tW

7:04 - Chris Do - The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blain Enns - https://amzn.to/35mN11i

I have to ask, who is responsible for turning the word 'creative' into a noun? It's just me, but it's like fingernails on a chalk board (for those of you old enough to remember what a chalk board is :-) ). I stopped watching 'Fro' You Tube stuff because he's using 'creative' as a noun.

With the proliferation of marketing into our daily lives, ahem, smartphones, using adjectives as nouns is turning into a habit for a lot of people.

Which is more the pity.

At least using nouns as verbs does not seem too popular, yet...

'Influencers' do things like that

I suppose they don't want to use the words "artisan" or "artist" because most "creators" aren't actually either of those things.

Good point.

I ask the same question. Language is for ever evolving but some rules need to apply if we are going to communicate and hope to be understood.