Learning to See Creatively

Learning to be a photographer is about more than focusing
and exposure. One of the most important and difficult
things is learning what to take a picture of, and then
designing an image that expresses something about its
subject.

Many authors of photography books talk about teaching the
photographer to see. I think of that as being the process
of selecting a subject and then deciding how it should look
to capture the photographer's vision of it. Bryan Patterson
promises to teach that in the revised edition of "Learning
to See Creatively". Unfortunately, he doesn't keep his
promise.

It's not that this is a poor book. The author talks about
the elements of photographic design like line, shape, form,
texture, pattern and color. Unfortunately he doesn't link
these elements to the photographer's vision. It's as if one
knew nothing about tools, had a plumbing problem, and was
presented with a wrench. It would be nice to be told how to
use the wrench to solve the problem. If you know how to
relate the tools to the problem, you don't need this book.

He also talks about composition and guidelines like the
rule of thirds, or frame within a frame. But even here, he
doesn't make the connection to vision. Even the chapter
called "Expanding Your Vision" turns out to be a discussion
of the characteristics of lenses of different focal
lengths.

There are chapters on digital photography and photographic
careers but they look like they were added on to the work
because somebody thought that was what would help the book
sell.

Peterson's photographs are good. When he explains why he
made the design and composition choices for a particular
picture you can see some relationship of technique to
vision. It's also interesting to occasionally see a
comparison of the same subject handled two different ways.
But unfortunately the author doesn't take the opportunity
to relate similar pictures to photographic vision.

This might be a good enough book for the intermediate
photographer who isn't really ready to work on his or her
vision, although I much prefer Brenda Tharp's "Creative
Nature & Outdoor Photography" which covers the same ground
in a more concise way.

One might think that you can't teach someone to see
creatively. That may be true, but Freeman Patterson's old
standby, "Photography & the art of seeing" comes a lot
closer than this volume. And books like those by Galen
Rowell or Tony Sweet do a much better job of relating
technique to the visions of their authors.