“A good photograph
is knowing where to stand.”
— Ansel Adams
Over 2,000 natural sandstone arches give this U.S. National Park in Utah the highest density of natural arches in the world.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Icon of India, the “Crown Palace” is a jewel of Muslim art and one of the New7Wonders of the World. Built 1632–53, the Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum in Agra, India.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
The Golden Pavilion — lined with real gold — graces this Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Thousands of red torii gates cover a two-mile-long path at this Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Get one-touch access to PhotoSecrets from your phone or tablet with the newly updated app. The update includes access to over 250 photo guides, a tile-based layout, instant search, the new camera-and-map-marker icon, and SSL security. First released in May, 2015, the app is available on Apple App Store (iOS), Google Play (Android), and Amazon Appstore (Android).
Here are some screenshots of the stores:
Alaska offers photographers glaciers, brown bears and gold-rush era towns. There are eight national parks and the tallest land-based mountain on Earth, Denali.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
This photo guide contains:
Sorry, currently unavailable.
The Statue of Liberty is the icon of New York and of freedom.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
The capital of Greece, Athens and one of the world’s oldest cities, Athens allows you to photograph the home of Western civilization, particularly the Acropolis hill and its Parthenon temple.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Berlin, home of the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag building, is the capital and the largest city of Germany.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
The popular photo-sharing site Flickr has been sold by Verizon to SmugMug. Terms were not disclosed.
”[This deal] will create the most influential photography community in the world.”
—SmugMug
SmugMug is an independent, family-run company, launched in 2002 and owned by father and son Chris and Don MacAskill, based in Mountain View, California (source).
”I don’t know what the future holds. This is a new model for me. We certainly think we need to operate it with an eye to our cash flow and our profitability. We are going to have to take a detailed look at the business and make sure it’s growing and healthy.”
— Don MacAskill, SmugMug CEO, April 20, 2018
The most visited unit of the National Park System, the Blue Ridge Parkway is a scenic mountain road running 469 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains through Virginia and North Carolina.
This guide is split into two books, one for each state, containing:
Virginia (mileposts 0–217):
North Carolina (mileposts 217–469):
Available as printed books from Amazon.
Virginia (mileposts 0–217):
North Carolina (mileposts 217–469):
PhotoSecrets now offers over 200 photo guides as books and ebooks. There are 12 printed books by PhotoSecrets and 189 books and Kindle ebooks by other publishers. All are searchable by location on the PhotoSecrets home page, and fulfilled by Amazon. As far as I can tell, this is the largest number of photo guides on the Internet.
I have many guides in development and I’m working on getting them available on Amazon as print-on-demand books, in black-and-white and in color. So far, twelve guides have made the leap.
I’ve scoured the Internet and Amazon looking for photography location guides. All the ones I could find for sale are searchable on the home page using my instant-search feature and tiles-based layout. (If you know of any more, please send me an email). Top publishers by number of books are:
Several locations are covered by more than one book. The most popular locations are:
Here is a long list of all 153 locations. To find books on any location, please enter the name on the home page.
The most photographed bridge in the world is the icon of San Francisco, USA.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
One of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, Easter Island is famous for its 887 iconic monumental human statues, called moai. Carved by the Rapa Nui people between the years 1250 and 1500, these distinctive monoliths surround the island and feature stylized faces.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
My first two-volume set is now available. PhotoSecrets Blue Ridge Parkway shows the most visited unit of the National Park System, a scenic mountain road running 469 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Volume 1 covers the first 217 miles through Virginia, and volume 2 covers mileposts 217–469 through North Carolina.
PhotoSecrets Blue Ridge Parkway, Volume 1 of 2: Virginia (mileposts 0–217): 6" × 9" paperback • 194 pages • 311 photos • 100 views • B&W interior $19.99 • color interior $29.99
PhotoSecrets Blue Ridge Parkway, Volume 2 of 2: North Carolina (mileposts 217–469): 6" × 9" paperback • 244 pages • 426 photos • 148 views • B&W interior $19.99 • color interior $29.99
Aalborg is a Danish city famous for its half-timbered mansions and Viking history.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Abruzzo in Italy is known as “the greenest region in Europe” as one third of its territory, the largest in Europe, is set aside as three national parks and 38 protected nature reserves.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Abu Dhabi is the capital and the second most populous city of the United Arab Emirates. Planned in 1967, the city has large hotels and modern architecture, notably the Sheikh Zayed Mosque.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
My first six print-on-demand PhotoSecrets books are now available. These are hard-copy versions of my photography-location guides that can be printed quickly and shipped to you via Amazon. (Update: Yes there are eight, I added two more.)
Each book is a 6" × 9" paperback, with 100–200 pages, and is available in two options: with a black-and-white interior for $19.99, or a nicer but more expensive color interior for $29.99. (Currently a few versions are unavailable due to an issue I’m working on.)
| Title | interior | |
|---|---|---|
| Easter Island, Chile | ||
| Fushimi Inari-taisha, Japan | B&W | |
| Golden Gate Bridge, USA | ||
| Kew Gardens, UK | B&W | Color |
| Kinkaku-ji, Japan | B&W | Color |
| Taj Mahal, India | B&W | |
| Arches National Park, USA | B&W | Color |
| Hampton Court Palace, UK | B&W | |
Print-on-demand (POD) is a technology where books are printed upon order, allowing prints of singular or small quantities.
When I first started publishing PhotoSecrets books in 1997, I used traditional offset printing, but that has a huge fixed cost which prohibits me from created a large number of titles. With the advent of digital printing, books can now be made individually, and the fixed cost to me is zero dollars. Now I can create books for free as PDFs (Portable Document Format), upload the files to CreateSpace, and have the books available on Amazon.
Later, I intend to make small print runs of popular books for distribution to other outlets, and create apps and e-books from the same source files for instant delivery.
Created in 1759, Kew Gardens comprises 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses in outer London.
This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
Henry VIII’s pleasure palace, dating from 1515, lies 13 miles southwest of central London. This photo guide contains:
Available as a printed book from Amazon:
To bring you a photo-based searchable menu of over a 1,000 photo guides, I’ve redesigned the PhotoSecrets home page around a colorful mosaic of tiles.
Several custom-coded features combine to bring you a fast-loading site with a simple layout and powerful abilities. Here is a summary:
The page displays in less than a second, using half the requests of Google.com (10 requests vs. 23). The image-independent design allows for a full layout without any large photo files, which are loaded later into placeholder boxes.
Designed for the smallest screen-size first and automatically adjusts to any screen size, so everything looks consistent and natural across all devices.
A simple, clutter-free layout emphasizes images and guides. There are no adverts, columns, or auto-play videos to confuse the eye and slow down the load time. Just big, pretty travel photos.
Faster than Google!: All content and code is local (on the page), so, unlike traditional search engines such as Google, a search on PhotoSecrets does not require calls to external server.
Predictive: Type two letters and matching requests are displaye instantly.
The body customizes itself to your search requests with a colorful mosaic of tiles. Enter a search request and the page displays a customized selection from over 1,000 built-in “tiles” of books, guides, articles, whatever. Tap any tile for more info.
From the “Explore” icon, you can burrow down through a wide breadth of topics, including over 300 locations and over 100 subjects/topics. This menu is part of a supplemental load, so it does not slow down the initial file load.
Read more without having to load a new page. Tap a tile and additional content — even an entire article — can pop-up. The content is already present in the HTML, so the browser can display it instantly, without requesting and loading additional data.
Edge-to-edge on any display. Lazy-load images only download just prior to display. Hardware accelerated transitions.
Only one font family is used for the body, and it’s also used on the ePub books, printed books, and apps. So there is a consistent experience across all formats.
Large resources (such as the search library, 1000+ tiles, subject menu, JavaScript for the tiles) is loaded separately in the background, so the initial page layout is fast and unburdened.