It is finally finished
Captain's log
It's been three months again, since my last newsletter. I've been making less Youtube videos than ever before during this period. The reason is that I decided to really focus on finishing my new macro photography handbook. I realized it would require me to stop making videos for a few weeks, to be able to really focus on the writing.
And now, the book is finally finished. It is an e-book (more on that choice below), a PDF with 113 pages of everything I learned about macro photography in the last 8 years.
The goal with this book has been to condense ALL my macro photography knowledge into an easy read that anyone can finish in a couple of hours. After reading it I want you to feel like Neo in the Matrix, when he wakes up after having downloaded everything there is to know about kung fu into his brain. But with macro photography.
Just like my videos, the book is a mix between technical information and inspiration. I think you need both to take better photos. And my goal with this book, is that after you have spent some time with it, you will take better macro photos than you have ever done before in your life.
In my book, I am going in deeper detail than in my YouTube videos. On YouTube you always need to be very brief, to not lose the viewers attention. In this book I can explain everything in full. At the same time, I have really tried to keep the book as simple and concise as possible. I don't want to bore the reader.
I also want my book to work as a reference. I typeset it with a very readable monospace font, so that you should be able to keep the book in your smartphone. Then you can read it in the field, when you are wondering what settings to use for non-flash macro photography, for example. The book is written in a way so that you don't need to read it from start to finish – you can just look up what you want to know and read just that.
The nice thing with macro photography is that settings and technique mostly work the same regardless of camera brand and lens used. And my book is written so that the tips apply no matter what camera you are using and no matter what macro lens you are using.
You might be asking yourself why you should buy this book, when I have already talked about almost everything in my 350 youtube videos about macro photography. The reason is that in this book, I have distilled the best and most important lessons. But above all, in this book the lessons are sorted and structured in a way so you can easily look something up. If you want to find my best advice on for example diffraction and how to handle that, it might be spread out across 10 different youtube videos – whereas in my book you can just go read directly in the diffraction chapter, where my best advice about diffraction are collected in a structured way.
I also expect to make updates to this book, and add things to it. If you purchase it, you will get an e-mail every time there is a new version of the book to download. And of course you will get all these updates for free for eternity if you have purchased the book.
Why did I make this as an e-book and not a physical one? The answer is that I wanted to limit the scope of this project. The complexity and cost of offset printing, packaging, and sending physical books across the world is pretty huge, and I don't want to combine that with the pretty big undertaking of writing a book. One step at a time. Perhaps if the book becomes popular, and there is a lot of demand for a physical print run, I might make one. We'll see. But for now: only PDF.
What about price? Some people will most likely complain about my decided price point of 39 US dollars. After all, it is only a digital book, right? Shouldn't that be cheaper? To be honest, I feel I must put the price around there to have any chance of making this a project that is viable economically for me. I still need to sell a ton of these PDFs to make it worth the time it took me to make the book.
And I feel like you are getting an awful lot of value for the money. You get 8 years of macro photography experience, condensed into a simple PDF that you can read in a couple of evenings. If you actually take the time to read my book and apply the tips, you will improve your macro photography skills by a lot, and that should be worth at least $39 to a lot of people. If some youtube photographers can charge $8000 for a workshop in an exotic location (not including flight tickets lol), I should be able to charge $39 for a nice little book containing EVERYTHING I know about my craft ;)
Also consider all the money you spent on your camera, your macro lens, your diffuser, your flash. It would almost be foolish not to spend a measly $39 extra to actually become good at taking beautiful photos, right?
So yeah, if you feel like you would want such a book, and at the same time support me financially in a time where it would be dearly appreciated, go grab a copy! If not, that's fine too. I still appreciate you, and I understand that this product is not for everyone. Thank you for taking the time to read this far, and see you on youtube!
Goodbye for now
See you in a month (or two, or three)! Feel free to follow me on YouTube and Instagram. If you like my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon. And lastly, feel free to tell your friends about this newsletter, and to reply to it if you have feedback or comments :)
/Micael