See It: Photographic Composition Using Visual Intensity by Josh Anon

by Ellen Anon

An outstanding image consists of more than just acceptable exposure and sharp focus - the two components that most photography instruction emphasize. A fascinating subject doesn't necessarily result in a good image, and likewise, it's possible to create an impressive image from a mundane subject. How do you capture that perfect image, and more importantly, what makes it great? That's where this book comes in. Rather than wasting time trying one approach after another until something seems right or memorizing a list of rules, discover a new, more comprehensive and yet intuitive way to think about photography and see the world around you by using visual intensity. The quality of your imagery and the speed of your workflow will both vastly improve once you are able to use these techniques to articulate why you prefer one image to another. Mother and son team Ellen and Josh Anon have spent years perfecting their visual intensity based approach to composition, and in this gorgeous, full color guide, they'll share their techniques with you so that your overall photographic experience, both in terms of time investment and quality of output, will become far more satisfying.

Genres: Photography

Paperback

First published October 26, 2012

Reviews

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

This book takes an interesting angle on composition: rather than discussing rules and how to apply them, it focusing on creating visual intensity to ensure that your subject is obvious and does not have distractions. To do so, topics ranging from light, shapes, post processing, and color are discussed in detail and with examples.

For a visual medium, the book is very cerebral and doesn't focus on images - the focus is very much on the concepts in the text. The photograph are non portrait for the most part (except journalistic at a location) so keep that in mind. Although a lot of the rules are applicable to portrait photographers, the lack of portrait-only examples may mean less immediacy for those photographers. For landscape or journalistic photographers, they will get a lot out of the book since defining a subject (or area of interest) of your images can often be much harder.

The use of poorer or weaker compositions next to stronger/better images is the best part of this book. Rather than showing an amazing image and explaining why it was amazing, the authors show less than stellar shots of the same image and how/why it was/can be improved. Examples could be anything from using diagonal rather than horizontal lines, ensuring that light is right for both background and foreground, and how color (or removing color) can change a mediocre image into a stronger one.

As mentioned, the book is cerebral and cites scientific studies and a lot of history/background material I don't feel help (in fact, just adds wordiness). They would have been better referenced as endnotes. Chapters are very wordy and the formatting lacks, well, visual intensity.

One other issue is that the book does try to paint a broad canvas for all levels of photography skills. As such, chunks may be too basic to be useful.

This is a solid 4 stars due to being thoroughly researched. But it does read like a textbook and could definitely use a more friendly tone and better presentation.

Received as an ARC from the publisher