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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful new textbook on the photographic process, April 4, 2008
This review is from: The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images (Paperback)
Once in a blue moon a book comes along that is so elegant, fresh, and deeply insightful that it takes your breath away. This is one of those books.
Photography has long been fraught with a divide between, as the author describes, two distinct disciplines - professional or fine art practices. Perpetuating these divisions is counterproductive to the photographic endeavor as a whole and often creates significant impediments for individuals from either camp in achieving their highest potential.
Angela Faris Belt is a professional educator on the faculty of The Art Institute of Colorado, and her new release is actually a textbook -- a beautifully crafted one. Her main premise is succinct and deeply insightful - that "photography is a unique form of visual language, and as such is based on a specific visual grammar." She asserts that four elements form the basis of this grammar, and that they "are specific to every image created through the action of light." The four elements are: the photographic frame and its borders; quality of focus as determined by the aperture or lens; shutter speeds and their effects in relation to time and motion; and the physical media used to the aggregate image.
The author believes that these four visual grammar elements must all be fully addressed in each image for that image to reach full potential, whether the intended end use is technical (commercial, reportage, portraiture, etc.) or artistic, and whether the medium is traditional or digital. Following the preface and introduction, each chapter addresses one of the elements in detail and is both illustrated and illuminated with small image portfolios by carefully selected artists.
The result is simply wonderful and provides a compelling entreaty for all photographers to embrace both sides of the photographic process in order to achieve their greatest potential in the use of imagery as a visual language for communication in all its variations, regardless of discipline or medium. The book belongs in the reference library of every aspiring photographer and deserves to be studied again and again until it is thoroughly internalized and thoughtfully applied in the ongoing practice of making images that communicate to their maximum potential.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very refreshing book, that teachs a lot, without going too technical., March 14, 2008
This review is from: The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images (Paperback)
This book is a very good book. It covers a great deal on the various aspects on what turns a simple picture into a great picture. It focuses a lot of energy on the photographer's ability to compose an image, and teaches a bit of the technical knowledge needed.
This book however does not cover in too much detail how a camera works, it assumes you have a moderately good understanding of what a camera is and what it can do. This is fine in a class room setting, as you would expect students to have a camera to take pictures with.
Pick up another book or read your camera Manuel if you want to master camera operations, read this book if you want to understand what kind of result can achieved with the various function of the camera, and how to compose a great picture with it.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but unsatisfying, November 1, 2009
This review is from: The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images (Paperback)
This book is apparently based on a college course taught by the author, and I think that is the source of both its strength and its weakness. The material is highly structured, delivered in bite-sized pieces, and followed by class exercises. I'd guess the students have already taken a foundation course on photographic technique, and then in this course they learn about creative photography. There are four main chapters, that cover creative aspects of (1) the frame (2) the lens (3) the shutter and (4) the print and presentation.
What's good about this is that the material is well-selected to be interesting and effective with students. There is no slavish emphasis on formulas and rules of composition (like the Rule of Thirds). Rather the text encourages a more general awareness of the effect that each photographic decision has on the final result. This is entirely in keeping with the viewpoints of great 'straight' photographers like Ansel Adams who rejected rules of composition. The main points are well taken. This approach empowers the student to investigate creative possibilities, and it did help me in this regard.
Ironically, slavish adherence to rules and formulas seems to have been replaced by an addiction to philosophical statements (the idea that every artist must have a message and every photograph must make a statement), some of which seem very contrived. But hey, this is probably quite representative of art college.
The book adopts a non-committal, anything-goes approach to creative photography which has the downside that some of the text is extremely vague. Even the class exercises are stated in a very vague fashion. (Presumably students' class exercises were assessed and this is where the students get concrete feedback on their efforts, but we of course are denied this).
Regrettably, the amount of core material in the book is limited. There's a lot of padding. There's considerable repetition (occasionally an entire paragraph is repeated mechanically from one chapter to the next, which rather undermines the author's campaign against rigid formulas). An excessive fraction of the book is given over to examples of students' work.
It was however fascinating to see some of the students' efforts. Some of the images were extraordinary and thought-provoking, and some of the statements were clear and forceful. Some of the statements were fairly contorted and incomprehensible. The majority of the images were not effective as images, at least for me.
This is a book that is worth reading and absorbing once. It has some good points but it won't be the kind of book that I re-read every couple of years.
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