Having just gone on at some length about how much I love Creative Live as a teaching resource let me talk about another favorite resource for photographers looking for guidance on taking that next step along the path.
I’ve really come to appreciate the titles being put out by the Craft and Vision people. This is a mini-publishing house founded by Canadian photographer David duChemin, and their specialty are ebooks (typically 32-50 pages long) sold for a very reasonable price (usually around $5, but discounts are common). Instead of spending a year writing a book and six months in production for paper, these books are shorter, but focus on a very specific subject and without the “filler” that the big behemoth printed books can contain. And the price? About the same as a trip to Starbucks, so it’s not hard to justify grabbing one that sounds interesting. All of these books are distributed in PDF format without DRM, so you can copy and view them anywhere. I typically stuff them into iBooks on my iPad, and they’re a common reading fodder for me at work during lunch breaks (when I’m not sitting and viewing Creative Live classes….)
When I’m researching a new topic or discipline, this is typically the first place I look for guidance. I’ve talked in the past about duChemin and how he’s influenced my photography; he’s the person who convinced me to push back into printing; his discussions on composition and thoughtfulness in creating images has strongly influenced my maturation as a photographer. (for other times I’ve written about him, and I swear I’m not stalking him, try Plug-ins are tools, not miracle workers and Three Days in a Darkish Room).
I’m not sure David duChemin and his writing is for the photographer just figuring out how to take a good picture or use the camera, there are other resources for that (like John Greengo at Creative Live); where I think duChemin shines is when you hit that point where the camera isn’t taking the picture you want to take, but instead the picture it wants to give you, and you want to figure out how to make the camera produce what’s in your head and not just what’s on the sensor. That process where you go from taking an image to creating it.
I could give you a list of Craft and Vision books I own, but in fact, I have all but about three titles in their catalog. Anything you see on their site that looks interesting, I suggest you try. You won’t be disappointed.
Photograph
One of duChemin’s projects has been an e-book style magazine called Photograph. This series comes out quarterly and just finished its first year. Each issue contains a lot of material: portfolios by photographers from around the world, technical discussions of photographic technique, a few equipment discussions. You can look at a typical table of contents here.
Photograph is missing a few things from the photography magazines you’re likely familiar with. It doesn’t have advertising. It doesn’t have sponsors. It doesn’t have articles that are little more than lists of gear that happen to be found in advertising elsewhere in the magazine. It doesn’t have pieces that’ll activate your Gear Acquisition gene.
Instead it has articles aimed at intermediate and advanced photographers trying to push their craft further. In the most recently issued edition, for instance, Michael Frye has a fascinating piece on adapting the classic Zone system for the digital age and how he uses it to make sure that his raw images have the detail and information he needs to create a landscape image.
For me, the portfolios alone are worth the price of the magazine, giving me a look into how the kind of photographer I want to be conceives, creates, catalogs and presents their images. It’s been a great resource for me as I’ve been trying to figure that out for myself.
So Photograph, like everything in Craft and Vision’s catalog, is highly recommended by me, and worth your time to check out and sample.