Rick Sammon's Creative Visualization for Photographers from Focal Press is a 312-page guide covering a range of photographic topics, including composition, exposure, lighting, learning, experimenting, setting goals, motivation, and more. Authored by professional photographer, educator, and instructor, Rick Sammon. His publication showcases his proven methodology for improving your digital photography. Utilizing an inspiring and motivating approach to teaching, Sammon strives to increase creativity and experimentation in photography through the use of easy-to-follow examples and simple changes to visualization, composition, and post-processing. The book is illustrated with more than 300 of Sammon's photographs and includes detailed information about exposure, composition, subject choice, lighting, mood, and depth.
A wide range of chapters and sections cover a variety of different topics and techniques: the Food for Thought section offers guidelines for setting goals, getting motivated, connecting with a subject, learning, painting with lighting, and thinking like a painter: Develop Your Creative Vision explores the subjects of composition, exposure, making images with impact, creating a mood, altering reality, and pursuing your passion; and the Imaging Processing Specialties sections covers how to use corrective and creative processing techniques, HDR, EDR, panoramas, and black and white imaging. Easy-to-follow instructions for working in Lightroom or Photoshop are also included, along with how plug-ins can help to improve image quality. The visual examples shown include both "photo failures" as well as successful imagery, with the distinctions between the two clearly outlined to help better understand what goes in to creating a successful photograph. Additionally, a chapter is also dedicated to self-assignments/photo challenges that allow you to apply the information learned to practical use.
Contents
- 1. Four Levels of Learning
- 2. Photography and the Space-Time Continuum
- 3. Making Image with Impact (Light, Subject, Color, Contrast, Abstract, Action, Lens, Exposure, Mood, Participation, Altered Reality, HDR, Processing)
- 4. Setting Goals
- 5. Why We Like the Work of Master Painters
- 6. Making Order Out of Chaos
- 7. Photography: The Death of Reality & The Birth of Creativity
- 8. Photographic Philosophies
Part II: Developing Your Creative Vision
- 9. Seeing the Light: Contrast, Direction, Color, Quality, Intensity, and Movement
- 10. Thoughts on the Histogram
- 11. Importance of a Good/Interesting Subject
- 12. Seeing in 2-D vs. Seeing in 3-D
- 13. The Mood of the Image
- 14. Follow Your Passion and Heart: Wildlife, People, Landscape, City Shooting, Nature
Part III: Capturing and Controlling "The" Moment
- 15. Composition: Rules and Breaking the Rules
- 16. Exposure
- 17. Controlling Light
- 18. Color
- 19. Dumb Luck Shots
Part IV: Corrective Image
- 20. Exposure
- 21. Color
- 22. Contrast
Part V: Creative Image Processing
- 23. The Art of the Crop
- 24. Black and White Imaging
- 25. Basic Image Processing
- 26. Playing with Plug-ins
- 27. HDR
Part VI: Telling a Story with Stills