David duChemin has release yet another ebook through his online store, Craft and Vision, dedicated to improving the craft and vision of photographers. This ebook, the second in the Print & Process series, stems from his Safari trip in Kenya last year and is aptly named “Safari: A Monograph.”
While I have loved everything I have read of David’s in the past year, I have been skeptical of this series. I was not certain it would impart anything more in my quest to learn photography. In fact, I did not read the first in the series “Venice: A Monograph” released about a month ago. So it was with hesitation that I sat down to read Safari. Boy, I am glad I did.
True to form, David stays close to his mission and spends the time to reveal his thought processes and the reasons behind the premise of the Print and Process series. He begins the book by explaining the premise and how he came to be traveling in Kenya and very quickly moves into presenting the final images from the journey. The images are each presented alone, without commentary. The idea here is to let the images tell their own story; to allow the viewer to create a relationship with each image unaffected by the input of the photographer.
Then David writes some thoughts about what it is like, and what it takes, to photograph a country, a people, an experience so far removed from his own experience living in Vancouver, Canada. He also walks the reader through an approach to overcoming preconceptions about a setting such as Kenya; the Serengeti; Africa, and to draw out, or allow to bubble forth, the images that want to be made. He’s a spiritual guy, David is. And I just love it! This is art-making! At least to me it is.
Following is a short description of what it took to make each shot; from technical details such as ISO settings and shutter speeds, to the admittance of just being lucky at times, David walks the reader through what it was like and what it took to make these images.
And what images!! The images alone are worth the price of admission in my eyes. The writing and thoughts can be pure bonus.
So I highly recommend this ebook as well as the others David has written and makes available on his Craft and Vision website. They are a great way to improve your photography without spending huge sums of money on more gear.
Note: I very much relate to what David is saying in the ebook and am tempted to share that here. However, I would like to preserve David’s efforts and not dilute your experience of his images as they attempt to tell their stories. So check back here to this blog for a follow-up post about what I learned from David through this project.
BONUS: For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code SAFARI4 when you checkout, you can have SAFARI, A Monograph for only $4 OR use the code SAFARI20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more books from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST JULY 11, 2010.