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Nude Photography Notebook: Inspiration, Ideas, Photographs and Techniques

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This is a fine art photography book that tries to break new ground. A photographer - Eddie Ephraums, who incidentally is also the designer and publisher of this volume through his own company Self Publishing Solutions - gets under the skin of another photographer, Allan Jenkins, giving us a backstage view of the latter's creative process.

The book broadly falls apart in three sections: an introductory part on artistic creativity ("Inspiration", "Ideas"), a middel section ("Photographs") focusing on the nude - the subject matter of a lot of Jenkins's photography - and a final chapter on the photographic techniques employed to produce these images. Hence, in concept the "Nude Notebook" is actually very similar to another recently published book - Julieanne Kost's "Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking" - that features a very similar architecture. But whilst the latter suffered from a lack of balance in the treatment of its subject matter, the Ephraums/Jenkins volume feels like a more genuine, more nuanced and better thought out effort.

A lot of that coherence is undoubtedly due to the notebook format that Ephraums has chosen here. In navigating between Jenkins' tasteful and suggestive nude images (produced via contact printing from large format negatives via the cyanotype process), facsimile pages from his sketch- and notebooks and Ephraums' colour images from the artist's studio and darkroom, one gets a feeling for the flow of ideas, the way in which images are shaped and the personality of the photographer. The mildly caleidoscopic layout of the book mimics the messiness of a notebook and reinforces the spirit of improvisation that is so characteristic for any artistic process. Indeed, improvisation , iteration, loose association, abstraction and openness to the unexpected seem to be key pillars of Jenkins' creative approach. All of this is suggestively brought home by this "Notebook", self-assured without spilling over into the self-conscious and the banal. Given a sensitive subject matter such as the nude, I think this is quite a feat.

I would finally like to point out that the book has been very carefully produced. It has been printed on a fairly thick stock of paper with a surface texture that mimicks the baryta paper traditionally used for silver halide printing. My copy was a hardback version that came in a very neat slipcase: it stands out nicely in my fairly large collection of photo books.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is working creatively with images and wishes to deepen his or her artistic vision.

First, this book is simply a handsome object. It meets the high standards of printing that you'd hope for in an art book. The book's design serves its content well: different typefaces distinguish commentary from real how-to information, and sepia-toned hand lettering adds aphorisms and random thoughts.

The instructional content won't meet all needs. It says very little about cameras, lighting, and the usual technical material. Instead, it talks more about expression, composition, and intent. Those matter to everyone, of course, but seem most likely to help people completely at home with their cameras - who think about what the image needs to be, not how to construct it. One real bit of technical instruction appears at the end of the book, and I'lll get back to that in a moment.

The samples presented here are very attractive. Notebook sketches appear many places, helping the reader trace the creative process from concept to finished print. Photos abound, of course. About a third cover technical concepts, including notebook pages, and shots from the studio and darkroom. The majority present female nudes, simple, attractive figure compositions and abstractions. Something like half of the figure photo appears as standard color and B&W imagery. The other half gives this book its unique character, the cyanotypes. Cyanotype, as the name implies creates imagery only in shades of blue. Normally just a footnote in the list of obsolete techniques, Jenkins has revived it and dedicated a large part of his career to it. That brings up the last bit of technical instruction: the cyanotype process itself. He presents the basic chemistry of the process and notes many of the ways that it borders on alchemy, in its interaction of technical process and imaginative or even spiritual arcana.

As collections of figure photo go, this might not star in any collection. Many readers will value its instructive side - I'm not a photographer, but I picked up tips that I plan to use. (Knowing them now, I can't not use them!) The quirky, distinctive, and highly variable use of cyanotype really brings this book into its own, though. I don't know of any other that so thoroughly fuses expressiveness with unusual and finicky technical process.

-- wiredweird

Although this "notebook" offers details into the thought-process of a photographer, the number of layouts and photo shoots lack the breadth of variety. Notes are scribbled on and lighting setup are jotted down as to give insight into the evolving process as the photographer develops the scene. I'd give five stars had the short book included many more scenes & layouts.