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I have read three other photo books and have gotten more from them individually than this book could ever give. I find this book hard to comprehend. I have tried to take my time reading this but have to continuously put it down. It is just too hard for me to understand. I would not recommend this for others personally.
A second level is more subject related: I have many books on nature, landscape and portrait photography. As such this is the sort of book that could be just as useful to any visual artist, not just photographers. I have more photo books than I care to count. It is talking about the construction of an image, what makes it work from a design point of view. Then reread. These tend to be a mixture of technical and mechanical. It talks about what is going on in the head of the viewer as their eyes encounter and explore the image, what makes for a satisfied viewer.
It is almost a text book. The beginner books tend to be about getting exposure correct, say, or perhaps introductory digital photography. It is reminiscent of art courses I have taken in the past.As such it is close to being a classic; the reason for the holding back one star is that I find it is a little hard going. A growing part of my library is on photoshop related books.This book is at the third level, one that I am trying to explore more. It does this by deconstructing existing sample images into their components. A book that needs to be read over a period of time. Of course that is not necessarily a bad thing.
I stopped reading it after a few pages.So the 1 star is for the Kindle version. So far this seems to be a wonderful book, but the Kindle version is awful. Most of the images are so low res and pixelated that they look horrible even on my iPhone. The book I would probably give 4-5 stars.I am going to try to get my money back for the Kindle version and then buy the book. The label "Optimized for lagre screens" is definitely misleading for this product.
I am a starting photographer, but have read several books of photography so far. I have to say that this one, as soon as I opened the pages I loved it, it explainsall the variables of composition and how they work in a very explicit way, even using diagrams to show exactly what the author means. I find myself taking into consideration the things that I read and remembering the diagrams and how they work. I certainly recommend this books to ANYONE whowould like to know more about the elements of composition.
This is a really good, inspirational description of compositional techniques, with quite a few great pictures demonstrating the principles. Quite a few times I thought, "Wow- that's a cool shot, and a great idea to try". Highly recommended.
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