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The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Freeman
Publisher: Focal Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.77
You Save: $10.18 (34%)
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Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 748
Media: Paperback
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 10 x 9.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0240809343
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN: 9780240809342
ASIN: 0240809343
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
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Product Description
Design is the single most important factor in creating a successful photograph. The ability to see the potential for a strong picture and then organize the graphic elements into an effective, compelling composition has always been one of the key skills in making photographs.
Digital photography has brought a new, exciting aspect to design - first because the instant feedback from a digital camera allows immediate appraisal and improvement; and second because image-editing tools make it possible to alter and enhance the design after the shutter has been pressed. This has had a profound effect on the way digital photographers take pictures.
The Photographer's Eye shows how anyone can develop the ability to see and shoot great digital photographs. The book explores all the traditional approaches to composition and design, but crucially, it also addresses the new digital technique of shooting in the knowledge that a picture will later be edited, manipulated, or montaged to result in a final image that may be very different from the one seen in the viewfinder.
Features
*Covers both traditional in-camera composition and the new opportunities for picture-making made possible by digital imaging editing
*Shows how to explore situations and locations in order to find the best possible photographic possibilities
*Uses clear examples from real photographic assignments, with schematic illustrations of how and why the pictures work
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| Customer Reviews: Read 46 more reviews...
 The Best Single Volume on Design and Composition in Photography June 14, 2007
T. Campbell
173 out of 176 found this review helpful
This is the best single volume on visual design and composition in years. Painters need a book this good. Freeman's earlier book from the 1980s, "Image," had long held the status, IMHO, of being the best single volume. His new book surpasses the older one by a significant margin.
Freeman is one of very few photographers, or artists of any ilk, who can articulate their art-related thoughts in concrete, accurate, analytical ways, and not in the jargon of so much of what is written about art that lacks any actual content. Not only is he an outstandingly gifted photographer, with dozens of books to his credit, but one who has mastered the grammar of images and is one of the few who can describe how and why visual phenomena work.
This is the most complete volume on this subject out there in terms of numbers of topics introduced and discussed at a reasonable length. It is also the most effective melding of the insights of current Gestalt perception theory with traditional design elements/principles in print. The first 60% of the book deals with the more concrete aspects of designing an image.
The last two chapters marry the other part of composing that is harder to articulate well: the message in a image, or the photographer's intent. Only in this book has an author attempted to define major categories of intent in making an image. And then categorizes the physical and mental aspects of how a photographer goes after, constructs, or recognizes an image - the process.
Throughout the discussions he introduces those aspects of digital imaging that a photographer can use to influence a picture's design. Perhaps the most powerful development is that digital in-camera and post processing technologies allow the photographer to apply to color images all those image control aspects formerly available only in the wet chemistry darkroom to monochrome images, as well as many more.
Make no mistake.... This is a book for readers. One cannot get all of this book's benefit from the illustrations alone, in the manner of so many "how-to" art and photography books these days that have pictures, but little text. But this is the book to which thoughtful photographers will return over and over for many years.
The only way it can be significantly better would be to have twice as many pages. It would make a wonderful textbook for any studio art, photography, art history, or art appreciation course in high school or college/university.
Easily the Best Photo Design/Composition Book Available November 4, 2007
Jeff Wignall (Stratford, CT USA)
99 out of 99 found this review helpful
Let me start by saying that even though I write photo books for a living (including The Joy of Digital Photography (Lark Photography Book), I don't know Michael Freeman and have never communicated with him. That said, this is easily the best composition and design book that you'll find--and that goes for professionals as well as hobbyists. This is the first book, in fact, that I can recall that covers these topics with such depth and clarity of thought.
Freeman has long been one of my favorite photo book writers and this book continues his long streak of great reads (his other recent book, The Complete Guide to Digital Photography is also worth owning).I sometimes laugh at how extremely British his writing is, but it's just amusing, not distracting.
The main thing that I like about The Photographer's Eye is that Freeman approaches the subject from a very thoughtful perspective. While the book covers the basic elements (lines, shapes, dynamic tension, balance, etc.) he also talks at length about more emotionally-related issues: chiaroscuro and key, the search for order, reactive thought, etc. These are the concepts that more experienced photographers (and artists) find themselves confronting once they have a solid feel for design elements and construction.
I often find myself wondering if design is more of a thoughtful process or an instinctive one--and I think it's a combination of the two. In reading this book, in fact, I can see better the value in taking an objective and analytical look a how great compositions are made and how we can take scenes that we react to instinctively and find quick and useful ways to turn them into dynamic photos. Very often when you find a great subject you don't have the luxury of time to decide how to construct the image to "get" what you see.
That is the value of studying composition and image design: to prepare you to make fast decisions. If you are hiking in the deserts outside of Tucson, for example, and you come across a great potential silhouette of a saguaro cactus at sunset, you have only two or three minutes to organize the elments, choose the best viewpoint, the best lens and then make the exposure. It's tragic to spend day after day exploring for powerful images and then only come close.
Freeman's book is crammed with an extraordinary number of great photos with a vast emotional and geographic diversity. These are world-class images, not just "how-to" examples and it's hard to imagine one photographer coming up with all of these great photos. As I said, I write and illustrate photo books myself and I am awed at times by Freeman's proflific work.
If you're looking for a book on design, don't let $20 stand between you and all of this great knowledge and hundreds of fine examples (something I might say of my own book, as well!). Just buy the book--or ask you library to order it.
Must have book on understanding photographich comp July 30, 2007
Patrick Holt (San Antonio, TX USA)
41 out of 45 found this review helpful
Ok anytime you talk aboutPhotographic composition and rules for it, you get into a grey area since art is subjective by nature. What the author does here is show his photos and explain what composition techniques he used and why he thinks they work. The book is very comprehensive and offers numerous example. The print quality is excellent as it is in most Focal press book. If you want a book that explains photographic compositional theory and offers great examples to demonstrate the concepts, then this is the book you need.
Better than a new camera August 15, 2007
J. Hall (El cajon, ca United States)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
You should NOT buy this book, because I want to dominate the Photographic Art world by myself! It is a straightforward treatment of compositional principles as they apply to Photography. The book was cheap, the knowledge priceless. It would be nice if there was a workbook along with it, though. I will have to reread this book several times because the book is thick with rich content. Ever read a book that had only one or two concepts to contribute? This guy covers a lot of ground - and he does it effectively.
 Only Half Blinded September 14, 2007
S. W. Kochansky (Venice, Italy)
23 out of 68 found this review helpful
Unfortunately, as with all art, this has been done before. What contemporary artists must do is make that clichéd art his own. Michael Freeman tries to do that here in his book but fails to make the comparison. Yes, his pictures are pretty but the depth of this tome is quite shallow. I get the feeling he is bored with his subject--during those moments he quickly refers back to his previous book on Light & Lighting. There is no new information here that cannot be found in the following links. The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski,Charles H. Traub's The Education of a Photographer, and The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin. If you want the real McCoy, buy John Szarkowski's tome by the same name. Hmmm...Perhaps we should look for new and refreshing material instead of trying to expand titles of previously published works. Nice try but done before...
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