Iconic Photographs

This is a very readable book, one which has a special place on my photograph bookshelf and one which I pick up and re-read from time to time.  I find it inspires me to try doing  things differently and, in any case, it is a good one to delve into.  A very “readable” presentation.

Do I need to introduce Freeman Patterson? He is well-known in the photographic world, is a prolific publisher of photographic works, has won numerous awards, was appointed to the Order of Canada and has established and given workshops throughout the world. His book reviewed here, Photography and the Art of Seeing, has been updated and expanded to include technical guidelines for both film and digital and is presented in four basic sections – Barriers to Seeing, Learning to Observe, Learning to Imagine and Learning to Express, with a final section on Photography and the Art of Seeing.

This is a book that challenges every photographer to learn to observe things differently and then to consider some unique ways of looking at the subject to be photographed.  Exercises, instructions and techniques are then presented clearly enough for the photographer to achieve that satisfying  photograph.  Freeman has included many excellent images demonstrating his thinking about looking at things differently, with comments on the thought process involved in making the image.

As he says in his introduction “…these exercises have helped me to see familiar things in a whole variety of new ways, and to photograph subject matter and situations using ideas and techniques I might not have tried twenty years ago.”

This is a welcome book, full of new ideas, and of interest to photographers from the amateur to the professional.  Good, inspirational reading and at less than $15.00 it is one that is difficult to be without!  And you can get it from Amazon by just clicking on the image of the book.

Photography and the Art of Seeing, Freeman Patterson, Key Porter Books.

Other books written by Freeman Patterson include -
o Photography for the Joy of It
o Photography of Natural Things
o Photography and the Art of Seeing
o Photographing the World Around You
o Namaqualand: Garden of the Gods
o Portraits of Earth
o The Last Wilderness: Images of the Canadian Wild
o ShadowLight: A Photographer’s Life
o Odysseys: Meditations and Thoughts for a Life’s Journey
o The Garden

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