The promised book review

The Art of Photography, A Personal Approach to Artistic Expression, by Bruce Barnbaum.

Let's start by remembering my difficulty with many instructional books. They exist on a spectrum, ranging from utterly simplistic, such as the various "X for Dummies", up to tomes written by experts containing extraordinary amounts of detail on everything that is known about that topic. One needs to be nearly an expert to read them. It seems to be difficult to find books in the sweet spot between those extremes.

This book is well towards the detailed side of that spectrum, and there's lots of room for details. This is a big book, 25 x 25 cm, and 388 pages. It's actually too heavy to hold up and read. I usually propped the spine on the arm of the chair. 

But the main good point is that it's not about gear, and it's (mostly) not about software, and it's not about the so-called 'rules' to produce a good photograph. It's about finding your artistic expression through photography. Finding subjects that you related to, and can express that in a photograph.

He makes it clear that he's all about B&W film in a 4x5 camera printed in a darkroom, and digital for colour work. He makes that point several times, so I'm wondering a bit if the chapters were assembled from other work. No real matter, it's just a bit more detail along the way, and it's his way of ensuring you know where he's coming from.

As a digression, even in my limited time in photography, I've seen that too many people seem to be more interested in tearing down the work of other photographers, or getting hung up on minutia of gear, than getting out to take their own photos and find what works for them. Barnbaum is unapologetically clear what his interests are, and how he goes about it, and if the reader does something different, that's fine. 

The how he goes about it, is the important part of the book, and there's lots of detail. Oh my goodness there is detail. Anyone interested in fine art done old school on B&W film printed in a darkroom needs to go and buy this book. Stop reading me for a moment and go order it. The publisher is Rocky Nook, and it was $61.95 in Canada. Just do it, you can thank me later.

If you're a digital colour photographer, which so many of us are, the purchase decision is a little more nuanced. Absolutely get it out of the library. Go put a hold on it now. If you see it in a book store, give it a really good browse. It's probably worth buying, knowing that you can probably re-sell it to Fair's Fair.

He goes into a lot of detail about editing images intended as artistic fine art. His artistic vision, which will almost certainly be different than yours, or mine, or any other photographer. The whole process starts in his head as he is looking at the scene, envisioning the final print. That drives the details around exposure, (and yes he goes into the zone system in detail), and development, and then editing, both old school and in software.

The overall process will be applied differently to every scene and every image, and thus driving specific decisions that affect the final image. And no, he's not all about pushing the sliders around willy nilly for dramatic effect. Subtle is the name of the game, and how the various controls interact with each other. I'm paraphrasing here, "If the viewer can tell how and where you edited the image, then you did too much." There's some re-reading I need to do there, and make some notes. 

Before I forget, a Curtis serendipity.

A mountainous serendipity, though I think I've blogged it before.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

The beautiful golden rolling landscape of SW Alberta, totally overshadowed by an inversion layer. 

Tombstone, but first an artsy serendipity that I had somehow overlooked from our last trip to New Zealand.

It occurred to me as I was doing a final read over before hitting the publish button, that this photo would work better if I swapped it horizontally, so the lines lead down and right.

Celina

The clicking of the camera woke her up.

Caribou

Lynx

River Reflections

Film