I just picked up this last night at B&N:
Amazon.com: The Photographer's Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos (9780240815176): Michael Freeman: Books
I have not read his previous book,
The Photographer's Eye, however, I have spent the morning reading the first half of
The Photographer's Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos book.
I sat in front of the photography section for almost a half hour before I started thumbing through this book. All the other books touched on things I already knew. Most of the other books I thumbed through talk about specific photographic tools, however, they really don't touch on bringing all together. As soon as I started thumbing this book it grabbed my attention. Why? I picked a random section and started reading, and the author was deconstructing an image, and why the image was a good image. After 5 mins of reading, I purchased the book.
This book has a different approach than others I have read. The author discusses hoow to take tools and bring them together for a good image. This book also touches on digital imaging and using the digital medium, however, I think most of what is in the book could be used for film, too. Its not heavy handed in concerning the digital medium.
The book is laid out in three main chapters:
- Intent
- Style
- Process
I am in the middle of reading the chapter on style, so, right now I'm just going to discuss the author's section on intent and what I thought about it.
I found the chapter on Intent fantastic. While Don has touched on "Intent" before, I found the author's approach and images a brilliant way to teach novice photographers like me about what "Intent" is.
The author discusses first, what the difference between the subject and the intent of an image is, and what the photographer is trying to achieve. He talks about the many layers an image can take. The author discusses the difference between the accepted beautiful versus challenging the viewers perceptions for what is truly beautiful. The author also discusses the sublime and how to capture those images.
The one section I really enjoyed was the section on Cliche's. The author address taking photographs from viewpoints that have been done repeatedly. The author discusses on how to make those sorts of photographs your own, and what ways that it can be done. For me, this is pretty important as I hike and take pictures of landscapes and waterfalls that have been done a 1000 times before.
The last section under the chapter of Intent talks about "The reveal". The author is discusses how that in photography, if an image shows everything, it can be completly uninteresting. He talks about how to use lighting and other objects in the scene for an image to give the feeling of trying to reveal something to the viewer, similar how a cinematograher does the same thing in a movie, revealing a suprise to the viewer.
I think for any novice photographer like myself, that the first chapter alone justifies the few dollars for this book.