Introduction

I believe the thing that makes it difficult to improve your photography is the ease with which you are able to make photographs. Raise the camera to your eye, press the button, and there you have it: a photograph.

It is this very simplicity that leads you to pick up a camera rather than a guitar or a tennis racket. With today’s technology, you can pick up almost any kind of camera and produce a picture that is both well exposed and in focus. If you are lucky, you produce an image that is visually pleasing and solicits the admiration of family and friends. If you try the same thing with a guitar, you succeed only in producing a noise that no one, except maybe your mother, describes as music.

Photography is the rare creative process that offers entry to virtually anyone. And its simplicity is enough to lure you into a lifelong passion.

However, there comes a time when photography becomes harder. Surprisingly, the difficulty does not lie in an inability to understand shutter speed and aperture, or ISO and exposure compensation. These technical matters are relatively easy to understand, if not to master. The real challenge lies in the ability to make good images consistently.

Anyone is capable of producing a really good image if they capture enough photographs. However, the challenge is being able to do so consistently, and more importantly, to understand how and why you were able to do it in the first place. Without that knowledge, your good photography relies more on luck than skill or talent.

With this book, I hope to remedy this issue by helping you to move beyond the technical side of photography to the world of seeing. It is the act of seeing that really provides photography its magic. It is the seeing that provides wonderful moments of discovery that inspire you to reach for the camera in the first place. It is the seeing that, when practiced and improved, allows you to reach your full potential as a photographer.

Throughout this book we are going to break down seeing into a visual workflow, with individual steps that will help you to not only make great photographs, but also gain a clearer understanding of what it takes to do so.

We will break down this visual workflow into four categories:

Light and shadow

Line and shape

Color

Gesture

You will discover how observing light and shadow helps you to make creative images of your subjects rather than simply document them. By observing line and shape, you will develop an understanding of framing and composition. You will see how color can help guide your eye to or away from your subject. And you will find how gesture transforms a good photograph into a great one.

By providing structure to your personal way of seeing, you will create a repeatable process that takes the guesswork out of a successful photograph. You will develop the skills needed to evaluate any subject and scene and transform it into a photograph that reflects both your vision and your unique way of seeing the world.

This visual workflow is not only important when you are making photographs, but is just as valuable when you are sorting through the hundreds of images you create during a shooting session. You will learn to use the very same principles of your new visual workflow to evaluate and compare images. You will confidently select your best photographs and understand why they are superior to others.

Along the way, I will share my own personal journey of seeing. I will share not only how it made a difference in my photography, but also how it taught me to enjoy and appreciate the visual feast that our world has to offer. I will be honest with those circumstances and thoughts that sometimes threaten my ability to be my best.

As you transform the way you see and capture the world, you will use photography to share how you, and only you, see what is around us. We will see the world through your eyes.

Let’s go.