Chasing The look – 10 Ways to Improve the Aesthetics of Your Photographs

That clever man David DuChemin has been at it again. Not content with writing a third book, doing publicity around the second, blogging daily, podcasting frequently and twittering multiple times a day – oh and celebrating his wedding anniversary – he has somehow found time to author another eBook.

“Chasing The Look, 10 Ways to Improve the Aesthetics of Your Photographs” is the fourth in his series of eBooks. The first two (available here), were incredibly well received. The fourth, out yesterday, promises to be even more popular.

Building on his theme that photographic vision is an expression of what we see and what we want to create, rather than an obsessive focus on technique ie the ability to explore your own vision and insight through the medium of your photographic craft – this latest book provides the now familiar mixture of insight, humour, philosophy and call to action that hallmark David’s books.

The theme of this book is knowing what choices to make to deliver a certain look. It is about making intentional choices about the use of which photographic gear and which camera settings we select to deliver a particular aesthetic. It’s a response to the question we all ask at some point while looking at the images of people like David, Gavin Gough, Edoardo Agresti or others – “How come my photographs don’t look like that?”

David explains that ”every setting on the camera, while a technical choice, is also an aesthetic decision affecting the look of our image. If you want to make better images, it begins with making decisions about “the look” first, and the settings second.”

As ever with David’s eBooks they are accompanied by stunning photographs, and a sophistication of graphic design and layout that makes these eBooks a visual treat.

It only costs $5. You can read endless books at $24.99 that never get you close to the sort of insights that David provides. What make these eBooks so different are David’s talent as a writer to make the complex simple, the technical amusing and the possibilities endless. Each section is concluded with a series of practical exercises by which you can go an experiment and focus on improving your craft.

Go buy it. You won’t regret it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 7:57 pm. It is filed under Worth following and tagged with David duChemin, technique, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.