Andreas Feininger

Andreas Feininger is one of my favorite photographers. He was a staff photographer for Life in the 1940s and '50s, and did impressive work with extreme telephoto lenses and showed tiny objects larger than life. You can find some of his work on Google Images, in the Life archives. Any of his numerous books are worth owning, and the concepts he explains in his technical books remain relevant, for the most part, even 50 years after they were published.