The Art of the Photograph: Essential Habits for Stronger Compositions Author: Inc. Art Wolfe | Language: English | ISBN:
0770433162 | Format: EPUB
The Art of the Photograph: Essential Habits for Stronger Compositions Description
Review
“Art Wolfe is a virtuoso.”
—Morgan Freeman
About the Author
ART WOLFE's stunning images are recognized throughout the world for their mastery of color, composition, and perspective. Wolfe is a recipient of the Photographic Society of America's Progress Medal and the coveted Alfred Eisenstaedt Magazine Photography Award, as well as a Lifetime Achievement award by the North American Nature Photography Association. Wolfe's television series,
Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge, airs on PBS stations throughout the country. He is also a popular speaker for such companies as Microsoft, IBM, and Sheraton Hotels. He can be found at artwolfe.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter. MARTHA HILL is a freelance writer and the former photo editor of Audubon magazine. TIM GREY is regarded as one of the top educators in digital imaging, having written more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles. He can be found at timgrey.com.
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Amphoto Books (December 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0770433162
- ISBN-13: 978-0770433161
- Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Sometimes the credentials of authors are as important as the content of their works. Art Wolfe is one of the great outdoor photographers, and in recent years, he has been working wonderfully in other genres. Rob Sheppard, an excellent photographer and former editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine, is a keen wordsmith. Any photography book coming from these two is worth the attention of other photographers.
“The Art of Photography” is aimed at teaching inexperienced photographers about image composition. There are chapters on inspiration, subjects, image design, equipment (to the extent it influences composition) and so forth. There is even a brief section on workflow, suggesting the order of considerations in making a photograph and then processing it in Lightroom. The book is illustrated with Wolfe’s elegant photographs and Wolfe himself has written a brief autobiography as well as short comments at the end of each chapter about particular photographs or series of photographs. Sheppard provides most of textual instructional material in a clear, easily understood manner that is practical.
The book aims at fundamentals and frankly has a lot of competition from other books that cover the same ground because most photography educators agree on the extent and content of the fundamentals. Occasionally the book strays beyond the fundamentals as when it discusses compositing pictures in Photoshop, but this seems to be more to alert the tyro photographer as to what he or she can look forward to as skills develop rather than to actually instruct. In the same vein are the discussions of Lightroom software. Even a whole book devoted to that subject would still leave room for further instruction.
If you were to buy only one book to inspire your photography and take it to the next level, The Art of the Photograph is the book to have. This magnificent book was created by the unbeatable combination of master photographers Art Wolfe and Rob Sheppard—specifically, it offers you photos by Art Wolfe and his stories about how he learned and now approaches his craft, along with Rob Sheppard’s text. Having had personal experience of Rob’s thorough and enthusiastic teaching, I can say that he is up to form in this book.
What makes Art Wolfe’s photographs the ideal visual material for this book—aside, of course, from his being one of the most outstanding photographers in the world today—is the amazing variety of subjects he captures. He travels the world, photographing everywhere from the Palouse to Antarctica, photographing people, landscapes, even abstracts. In fact, he advises you not to limit yourself by self-identifying as a particular type of photographer but, instead, to be open to everything. One of the valuable concepts I’ve learned from the book is to be looking for the photograph, not for the subject.
The chapters are titled “Finding Inspiration,” “Discovering the Subject,” “Constructing the Image,” “Camera and Lens,” “The Elements of Design,” “Color and Black-and-White,” “Light and Composition,” “Creative Solutions,” “The 10 Deadly Sins of Composition,” and “Equipment and Workflow.” The chapters offer springboards to help you formulate your own philosophy of and approach to photographing; this is not a “how to” book of the technical aspects of photography.
One of the great strengths of The Art of the Photograph is that it is conceived, in part, as a dialogue between the authors and the reader. This is vitally important.
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