Great Photographs Made Easy, Vol. 1: How To Take Wonderful Still Life & Food Photographs With Allen Vogel; Great Photographs Made Easy, Vol. 2: How To Take Gorgeous Fashion Illustration & Beauty Pictures With Dennis Kitchen; Great Photographs Made Easy, Vol. 3: How To Take State-Of-The-Art Special Effects Photographs With Charles Wiesehahn

This series is aimed toward photographers who want to go beyond the basics of photography. In Volume 1, Allen Vogel demonstrates the techniques he's developed for getting great food photographs. After briefly describing the philosophy of food photography, Vogel works with a food stylist to create an appealing tableau, and then he shows the various steps in setting up and shooting a picture of a seafood stew. In addition to the stew, Vogel demonstrates the secrets of shooting beer and glass shots, how to use background to good advantage in consumer products advertisement pictures, and how he solved a tricky problem doing a peaches and cream shot (the cream is actually Elmer's glue). In Volume 2, Dennis Kitchen discusses his philosophy of fashion photography, creates a set (a stable) from scratch with easy step-by-step instruction, and does a session shoot with a male and female model. Viewers also see his creative approach to a "bride" shot (a New York City street shot with the bride flagging a taxi), and how to do close-up beauty shots. In Volume 3, Charles Wiesehahn instructs viewers in the complexities of special effects photography. Incredibly, a number of his most visually intriguing photographs are done with a single camera (using multiple exposures), and extremely simple and inexpensive tricks of the trade. Even non-shutterbugs would be fascinated with the way that Wiesehahn is able to suspend electronic components beaming multi-colored rays against an outer space background-with only a few clothespins, hangers, pins (for making larger stars), glitter (for smaller stars), a few strips of gel, and black paper. In addition, Wiesehahn discusses his techniques for strobe and blur shots, as well as other special effects. Excellent for advanced photographers, these three initial episodes in the series are all highly recommended. (Available from: Martin Creative Group, 175 Fifth Ave., Suite 2538, New York, NY 10010;1-800-843-0048.)