The Photographer’s Eye

After reading Ted Leung’s book review of Michael Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye, I decided to get a copy and read it myself.

A little history first. I’m a very budding photographer at this point. Thanks to David Hobby, I believe I understand how to manipulate the lighting, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to get the exposure that I want, and the way I’d like it to look. But, I’m still struggling with composition, and some mechanics (trying to adjust settings while my subject is changing). Composition seems to be the biggest issue though… and imagine that’s the case for all new photogs. :-)

I’m not sure what my expectation was before reading the book, but it’s an excellent book. It’s not very long—at least not by my standards—only 187 pages. However, it’s very dense with information. The book touched all parts of photography: framing, color, composition on many different fronts, and process. Michael Freeman did a wonderful job of walking through many aspects of his pictures, sighting the thought process about the framing, the color choices, the choice of contrast, etc. The most valuable part was he also showed less than ideal pictures too. He put them there on the page for you to study and see the differences between good and “bad”—which is terribly useful for schmucks like myself who still don’t have a good sense of how to make a good picture.

For those of you living in Howard County taking some of the photography classes and is getting serious about the subject: save your money. The one on lighting was very, very introductory. In fact, the instructor called me “advanced.” You got to manipulate your camera, but the class was too short to really do much. Instead, head over to Strobist and read that. David Hobby does an awesome job of breaking it down for you. I recently took another on composition, and was rather disappointed by that one too. We spent a lot of time going over guidelines, and didn’t get a chance to try and compose a single shot. Moreover, the slides the instructor showed were all ideal. Not one shot was a comparison between how a different composure would change the dynamics of the picture. Instead, read The Photographer’s Eye. It’s not expensive, and does a much more in-depth job than the class. The down side: it takes time to read, and there is no instructor to ask questions. Despite that, it’s still better than the HoCo class. :-)