In The Photographer's Vision, international bestseller Michael Freeman examines the work of photography's greats, explaining how to view a photo and how to learn from looking at it. Photographers featured include some of the most distinguished names in photography's history: Nick Knight, Frederick Henry Evans, Frans Lanting, Tim Page, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nan Goldin, Walker Evans, Cindy Sherman, Elliott Erwitt, Trent Parke, Jeff Wall, Paul Strand, Romano Cagnoni and many more, making this book visually stunning as well as intellectually rigorous.
Design is the single most important factor in creating a successful photograph. The ability to see the potential for a strong picture, then to organise the graphic elements into an effective, compelling composition has always been one of the critical skills in making photographs. Since its first publication in 2007, The Photographer's Eye has established itself as the essential work on this subject, and a key book for modern photographers, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold. It explores all the traditional approaches to composition and design and, crucially, also covers digital possibilities like stitching and HDR. In keeping with the book's purpose "to expand the possibilities of the medium without compromising the photographer's vision" this edition has been completely remastered to celebrate its tenth anniversary. All-new digital reproduction, not available when the book first came out, gives the author's photography a fresh new look, while retaining the know-how that has given a generation of photographers new purpose.
Within the Frame is a book about finding and expressing your photographic vision, specifically where people, places, and cultures are concerned. A personal book full of real-world wisdom and incredible images, author David duChemin (of pixelatedimage.com) shows you both the how and the why of finding, chasing, and expressing your vision with a camera to your eye. Vision leads to passion, and passion is a cornerstone of great photography. With it, photographs draw the eye in and create an emotional experience. Without it, a photograph is often not worth—and can’t capture—a viewer’s attention. Both instructional and inspirational, Within the Frame helps you on your photographic journey to make better images of the places and people you love, whether they are around the world or in your own backyard. duChemin covers how to tell stories, and the technology and tools we have at our disposal in order to tell those narratives. Most importantly, he stresses the crucial theme of vision when it comes to photographing people, places, and cultures—and he helps you cultivate and find your own vision, and then fit it within the frame.
Having already taught you how to compose and interpret great photos, Michael Freeman now continues his best-selling series by exploring the most successful methods for presenting photography meaningfully and in an engaging format. This is the critical "next step" that separates adequate image galleries from captivating collections - and disinterested viewers from enthralled audiences. Tapping into his decades of experience shooting for such publications as Smithsonian, GEO, and Condé Nast Traveller (among many others), Michael Freeman studies the photo-essay phenomenon that took the world by storm and gave storytellers a completely new set of tools to construct their narratives. Having established how rhythm, pacing, and careful organisation build tension and cultivate interest, Freeman goes on to explain what this means for presenting your own photos, particularly in the new digital formats of online galleries, slideshows, and tablets. The Photographer's Story will enliven your images, refresh your perspective, and elevate your understanding of how photographs work together to tell a story. Your audiences will thank you for it.
In The Photographer's Eye, Michael Freeman showed what a photographer needs to do in the instant before the shutter is released. In the sequel, The Photographer's Mind, he explained the way that professional photographers think a picture through before taking it. Both of these international best-sellers featured Michael's own photography: stunning landscapes, revealing portraits, and fascinating street photography. Now, in The Photographer's Vision, he examines the work of photography's greats, explaining how to look at a photo - and how to learn from looking at it. The featured work includes some of the most distinguished names in photography's history: Nick Knight, Frederick Henry Evans, Frans Lanting, Tim Page, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nan Goldin, Paul Outerbridge, Walker Evans, Cindy Sherman, Elliott Erwitt, Trent Parke, Jeff Wall, Paul Strand, Romano Cagnoni, Horst Faas, James Casebere and many more, making this book visually stunning as well as intellectually authoritative.
Taking a new look at composition, the theme of his bestselling classic The Photographer's Eye, Michael Freeman now explores the visual mechanics of photography in its own native terms. Lushly illustrated with straight-to-the-point diagrams and graphic deconstructions, this new, digitally remastered edition speaks in that intuitive, visual, and instantaneous language in which photographers think and work. Each section is organized into discrete units that articulate a working method for communicating particular ideas and capturing certain subjects. Dive into beautiful images and explore how each compositional element is placed and arranged in relationship to each other. Examine the outtakes from each shoot to understand why one particular image succeeded, compared to those shot before and after. Track the viewer's eye as it moves throughout the photo to see the optical dynamics held within each frame. And most of all, internalize this graphic language so you can instantly recognise amazing and powerful shots as they appear in your own viewfinder.
Learn to ask better, more helpful questions of your work so that you can create stronger and more powerful photographs.
Photographers often look at an image—one they’ve either already created or are in the process of making—and ask themselves a simple question: “Is this a good photograph?” It’s an understandable question, but it’s really not very helpful. How are you supposed to answer that? What does “good” even mean? Is it the same for everyone?
What if you were equipped to ask better, more constructive questions of your work so that you could think more intentionally and creatively, and in doing so, bring more specific action and vision to the act of creating photographs? What if asking stronger questions allowed you to establish a more effective approach to your image-making? In The Heart of the Photograph: 100 Questions for Making Stronger, More Expressive Photographs, photographer and author David duChemin helps you learn to ask better questions of your work in order to craft more successful photographs—photographs that express and connect, photographs that are strong and, above all, photographs that are truly yours.
From the big-picture questions—What do I want this image to accomplish?—to the more detail-oriented questions that help you get there—What is the light doing? Where do the lines lead? What can I do about it?—David walks you through his thought process so that you can establish your own. Along the way, he discusses the building blocks from which compelling photographs are made, such as gesture, balance, scale, contrast, perspective, story, memory, symbolism, and much more. The Heart of the Photograph is not a theoretical book. It is a practical and useful book that equips you to think more intentionally as a photographer and empowers you to ask more helpful questions of you and your work, so that you can produce images that are not only better than “good,” but as powerful and authentic as you hope them to be.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Better Questions
PART ONE: A GOOD PHOTOGRAPH? Is It Good? The Audience's Good The Photographer's Good
PART TWO: BETTER THAN GOOD Better Subjects
PART THREE: BETTER EXPRESSION Exploration and Expression What Is the Light Doing? What Does Colour Contribute? What Role Do the Lines and Shapes Play? What's Your Point of View? What Is the Quality of the Moment? Where Is the Story? Where Is the Contrast? What About Balance and Tension? What Is the Energy? How Can I Use Space and Scale? Can I Go Deeper? What About the Frame? Do the Elements Repeat? Harmony Can I Exclude More? Where Does the Eye Go? How Does It Feel? Where's the Mystery? Remember When? Can I Use Symbols? Am I Being Too Literal?
PART FOUR: BETTER PHOTOGRAPHS The Heart of the Photograph Index
The blind photographer cannot see a butterfly perched perfectly still on a flower, a bowl of sweet-smelling fruit, or a child's rattle on a darkened floor, but the mind's eye is sharply focused. How then, do blind or partially sighted people capture such extraordinary images? The photographs in this revelatory book suggest a deeper truth: that blindness is itself a kind of seeing, and that those who can see are often blind to the strangeness and beauty of the world around them. As the blind photographer Evgen Bavcar writes, "Photography must belong to the blind, who in their daily existence have learned to become the masters of camera obscura." Through the photographs of more than fifty blind or partially sighted people from around the world, this exhilarating book—the first to explore this phenomenon in all its vibrancy and diversity—will make you see differently.
