Making A Photographer

Making a Photographer

An unprecedented and eye-opening examination of the early career of one of America’s most celebrated photographers One of the most influential photographers of his generation, Ansel Adams (1902–1984) is famous for his dramatic photographs of the American West. Although many of Adams’s images are now iconic, his early work has remained largely unknown. In this first monograph dedicated to the beginnings of Adams’s career, Rebecca A. Senf argues that these early photographs are crucial to understanding Adams’s artistic development and offer new insights into many aspects of the artist’s mature oeuvre. Drawing on copious archival research, Senf traces the first three decades of Adams’s photographic practice—beginning with an amateur album made during his childhood and culminating with his Guggenheim-supported National Parks photography of the 1940s. Highlighting the artist’s persistence in forging a career path and his remarkable ability to learn from experience as he sharpened his image-making skills, this beautifully illustrated volume also looks at the significance of the artist’s environmentalism, including his involvement with the Sierra Club.

The Heart of the Photograph

Learn to ask better, more helpful questions of your work so that you can create stronger and more powerful photographs.

Photographers often look at an image—one they’ve either already created or are in the process of making—and ask themselves a simple question: “Is this a good photograph?” It’s an understandable question, but it’s really not very helpful. How are you supposed to answer that? What does “good” even mean? Is it the same for everyone?

What if you were equipped to ask better, more constructive questions of your work so that you could think more intentionally and creatively, and in doing so, bring more specific action and vision to the act of creating photographs? What if asking stronger questions allowed you to establish a more effective approach to your image-making? In The Heart of the Photograph: 100 Questions for Making Stronger, More Expressive Photographs, photographer and author David duChemin helps you learn to ask better questions of your work in order to craft more successful photographs—photographs that express and connect, photographs that are strong and, above all, photographs that are truly yours.

From the big-picture questions—What do I want this image to accomplish?—to the more detail-oriented questions that help you get there—What is the light doing? Where do the lines lead? What can I do about it?—David walks you through his thought process so that you can establish your own. Along the way, he discusses the building blocks from which compelling photographs are made, such as gesture, balance, scale, contrast, perspective, story, memory, symbolism, and much more. The Heart of the Photograph is not a theoretical book. It is a practical and useful book that equips you to think more intentionally as a photographer and empowers you to ask more helpful questions of you and your work, so that you can produce images that are not only better than “good,” but as powerful and authentic as you hope them to be.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Better Questions

PART ONE: A GOOD PHOTOGRAPH?
Is It Good?
The Audience's Good
The Photographer's Good

PART TWO: BETTER THAN GOOD
Better Subjects

PART THREE: BETTER EXPRESSION
Exploration and Expression
What Is the Light Doing?
What Does Colour Contribute?
What Role Do the Lines and Shapes Play?
What's Your Point of View?
What Is the Quality of the Moment?
Where Is the Story?
Where Is the Contrast?
What About Balance and Tension?
What Is the Energy?
How Can I Use Space and Scale?
Can I Go Deeper?
What About the Frame?
Do the Elements Repeat?
Harmony
Can I Exclude More?
Where Does the Eye Go?
How Does It Feel?
Where's the Mystery?
Remember When?
Can I Use Symbols?
Am I Being Too Literal?

PART FOUR: BETTER PHOTOGRAPHS
The Heart of the Photograph
Index

The Successful Professional Photographer

Learn how to confidently build a thriving and profitable career as a professional wedding or portrait photographer!

For nearly a decade, renowned wedding and portrait photographer Roberto Valenzuela has been sharing his vast knowledge and unique, systematic approach to making photographs as he has taught workshops around the world and written five critically acclaimed and bestselling books that cover composition, posing, lighting, and wedding photography (his Picture Perfect and Wedding Storyteller series of books). He has helped countless photographers improve their craft.

But the truth is that you can create the most amazing photos…yet still have a failing business. And what’s the point of being a great photographer if you can’t build a career, pay your bills, and feed your family? In order to create a thriving business, you need a different kind of knowledge and a new set of tools to succeed. In The Successful Professional Photographer, for the first time Roberto turns his focus on the business and marketing of your photography so that you can build and sustain a highly profitable business as a wedding and portrait photographer. Roberto shares all his hard-earned knowledge regarding finding clients, marketing and presenting your work, and getting paid what you deserve. Topics include:

• Best practices and strategies for Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook

• Being found through SEO

• Promoting yourself and your work

• The role that testimonials and reviews play in your success

• Creating long-term client relationships

• Forming personal connections with clients with promo videos

• Why you should feature your work in publications

• Pricing your work and the gentle art of the up-sell

• Understanding and conveying the crucial importance of selling prints

While the photographs you create are the core of your work as a photographer—being exceptional at your craft is a must—that’s only half of the formula you need for building and sustaining success. The other half of the formula is here, in The Successful Professional Photographer. Implement the strategies and techniques outlined here, and you’ll have everything you need to succeed and build a long, prosperous, fulfilling career as a wedding or portrait photographer.

Foreword by Luke Edmonson