Published: 2018-09-24
Total Pages: 381
In Making Photographs, photographer Ibarionex Perello teaches you how to face and conquer two of the greatest challenges for a photographer: to consistently make good images and to see the photographic possibilities all around you.
Ibarionex shares the approach and techniques he’s honed over the last 15 years while conducting workshops and teaching photography courses to countless students of the craft. The key to this approach is to develop and implement a visual workflow that allows you to create a repeatable process for your photography. This workflow revolves around the four “visual draws”—light and shadow, line and shape, color, and gesture. As Ibarionex discusses each of these visual draws, you’ll learn how to move beyond merely “looking” at the world around you to “seeing” photographic possibilities at every turn. It is this act of seeing that gives photography its magic—and that gives you the vital tool you need to improve your work. Rather than simply taking pictures, you’ll begin making photographs.
Ibarionex also covers topics such as exposure, composition, preparation, lighting, the role of emotion, culling your images, self-assessment, and post-processing. He presents the stories behind his photographs, which reveal his thought process as he works through a scene; shares some of his successes, failures, discoveries, and breakthroughs; and includes assignments and challenges to inspire and motivate you to put these principles into immediate action in your photography.
With a foreword by Joel Meyerowitz
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Cambria} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0px}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