The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Freeman
Publisher: Focal Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 780
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 10 x 9.2 x 0.3
ISBN: 0240809343
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN: 9780240809342
ASIN: 0240809343
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
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Shipping: International shipping available
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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 25 more reviews...
 As far as I've read this book is fantastic July 21, 2008
I had seen this book's pictures and notes on the photos it has before I bought it, now Im happy to find out that this guy writes very well and clear. The book is based on desing principles and theory more than other things. It helps the photographer to have a better idea of why and how images work and how they impact. The book its packed with info on all pages.
I highly recomend it
Awesome July 18, 2008
Great book! Loved the simplicity and extremely educative for novice photographers like me. Loved the clean and crisp language, very well composed book, just like the concepts it talks about.
Love it!
 An Essential for the Photographer's Bookshelf July 18, 2008
If I were putting together a recommended list for a photographer with any ambition of going beyond vacation snapshots, this book would be on it. After you've acquired a good grasp of the basics -- aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, and so forth -- and you've become familiar with the essential post-processing tools available in Photoshop; its powerful but much less expensive offspring Photoshop Express; or Apple's cool new Aperture application, you'll want to begin to incorporate design principles into your shooting and post-processing. Freeman's book does a great job of explaining these principles clearly and simply, so that you'll begin to think in design terms before you push the shutter release and again when you're deciding how to crop, etc., during post-processing. And the book itself is beautifully designed.
Beautiful photos; lots of words but author really knows about photographic composition design June 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Strengths: Beautiful photographs. Great layout and good titling next to photographs.
Weaknesses: The chapters relate to design and composition. The somewhat helpful if the author also focused on the subjects of most photographs as applied to photographs (nature, sports etc).
Novice/Intermediate/Advanced
Rating: 5/5
Introduction
This book is all about design, a most important factor in the creation of good photographs. The main focus is the subject of composition and design for digital photographers. The importance of seeing and the n shooting your favorite photographs, involving all the dynamics, can be a daunting task. The Photographer's Eye can be a book that can help you see your visions more clearly.
The author is a renown international photographer and writer who specializes in travel, architecture and Asian Art. The 6 chapters have a multitude of stunning photos that implore you to read further into the insights that went into creating these insightful visuals. The main aim of the book is to show you more about what is behind the author's eye as he took this photographs.
The book covers the essentials of: image framing ( cropping, stitching and extending, filling the frame); design Basics involving contrast, texture, pattern, balance, visual weight etc); graphic/ Photographic Elements (horizontal, vertical, diagonal lines, curves, motion, focus, exposure); light and color composing; focus on the Intent (a great chapter which made me stop and ponder my own internal motivations and intentions in taking images); process (search for order, anticipation, juxtaposition). So while the book is not a lengthy one it covers much within its pages.
Conclusion
This book is not an easy read per sey. Most of these photos include a title which highlight and critique the the details that produced the idea behind the photograph. This book is definitely not a quick guide or set of easy tutorials. It is more a comprehensive look into many approaches that will help in the taking and later possibly editing your photographs.
Normally the procedure of taking a photograph is think of a scene or a photograph you want to take of it and then let your digital camera do its work. However to acquire a better photograph you need more then quick ideas. This book is not about quick ideas to make your photographs quickly. This book is all about absorbing the ideas found in the details of the book. The author really wants you to see into the "minds eye " involved perceptions. He shows you with brilliant photographs, helpful principals to guide you through taking better photos. He reflects on the dynamics involved and shows the results "that will stand out".
All in all, I like this book. I can't fault the author for designing a labor intensive reaching. Learning about details and composition and translating these to making your photographs better takes more time then just browsing. There is much to learn from this book and what he has to say. But for me (and possibly others), to really get the most out of the book, I feel like I will have outline some of these design aspects and seeing how I can incorporate his ideas and insights into my photographic sessions in the future.
The trick will be how and when this book will, to even greater extent, help me with the viewing or seeing a scene that can help me visualize and take better notice of opportune moments, reflections or scenes I see through my camera's viewpoint. Reading this book will help me in the future. It is just a matter of looking through all these "pearls of wisdom" and focusing by better use of opportune times when I hope to make better photographs. While I have done that in the past, the book has helped me realize there is even further "ground for me to break" in the area of capturing better photos using "my mind's eye". Take a look at this book and see what it might do for you.
A Master-Class on Photographic Composition June 8, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Freeman's journey through the the principles of photographic composition is eye-opening, eloquent, and beautifully published.
This is not a book on the basics of taking "better photos," so those who seek information on exposure, cameras, lenses will not find it here. Nor is such shooting information for any photographs included. In a general book on photography, this would be a major defect, but here such information would only distract from the book's primary subject: the composition of a visual image.
On the surface, photographic composition may seem to be a very subjective and idiosyncratic topic: you may like one thing, I may like something else. And if it's all subjective, merely a matter of personal preferences, tastes, and opinions, why bother writing a book about it? Most books on photography thread gently on this shaky, insecure ground, and their authors usually limit themselves to a few simple, predictable pointers: the rule of thirds, and golden section, with a particular emphasis on golden rectangle.
But Freeman quite clearly believes that, although ultimately each photographer makes their own choice about what composition works best for their photograph, good choices are those that are deliberate (not accidental), and informed by being aware of ALL the possibilities that are available. The Photographer's Eye will give any intermediate or advanced photographer a better awareness and grasp of choices that are to be made.
Freeman starts at the edge of the image (chapters about the frame) and moves inwards. Available formats, for example (4:3, 3:2, square, horizontal vs. vertical, etc.) are all carefully explored through numerous, and well-chosen examples. Unlike many books that show different images as examples of different formats, Freeman often selects one, single image and shows how its perception will change, depending on the selected format or compositional principle at play. In the chapters on framing I enjoyed particularly the sections focused on "going against the grain" or against the "natural direction" of an image, i.e., shooting typically "vertical" topics (e.g., a standing man) as horizontal frame, or the other way round (e.g., a sleeping man on a bench shot in a vertical format Freeman uses).
Gradually, the author moves inwards, discussing the content of photographs in the context of forms (curves, lines, etc.) and compositional principles (e.g., symmetry, or a very complete discussion and listing of types of contrast). The closing chapters go totally "outside" of the single image, considering the impact of external framing and space around the photograph (e.g., matting), as well as multi-image compositions (such as book or magazine spreads).
As some readers have correctly pointed out, some of the information has been published before in the author's own previous books, and in other sources; but here, all the observations have been systematically, and very elegantly brought together, in one comprehensive and complete volume.
This book doesn't read easily, or fast. It forces the readers to engage both sides of their brain, since paying close attention to the images is as important here as carefully reading the words. But it is well worth the effort, and the reward, in addition to access to the authors' extensive knowledge, is a new, different way of seeing things which in themselves are not new. For me, this is the function, and definition, of a master-class, and this book certainly deserves to be called that.
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