Photography and the Art of Seeing: A Visual Perception Workshop for Film and Digital Photography

I prefer this 4th edition over the 1st edition, which I bought some years ago, and which set me on a course not only of making pictures but also of enlarging my world and calming my soul. I know that attribution of so many lessons to one book is quite generous,yet it is a remarkable book.PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ART OF SEEING remains, in my experience, the book most worthwhile for anyone who wants to appreciate the world and his or her place in it. It is a wonderful book about perception and creativity, cooperative study, and learning. It is effective because it is clear and its discussion is simple without being simplistic. It offers effectively organized activities to help improve various aspects of seeing, and incidentally, to help one understand the aesthetics of imagery, description, and photography.This edition really has been revised so that people who are picking up a DSLR, but have not used a film SLR, can benefit from it. Such was really not true of the first and second editions of the book, since Freeman Patterson photographed with film long before changing to digital. (I admit that I appreciated his books at first because of my heritage as a film photographer.) In revising PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ART OF SEEING, Mr. Patterson has widely avoided discussion of technology. Rather, he has dealt with the philosophy, psychology, activity of creative image-making. As a result, one can use the book's exercises whether one works with digital or film media.As a bonus, one gets Mr. Patterson's genial prose and some of his wonderful photographs. He seems to be a kind artist, and that is a real compliment, I believe.

This book is about practical techniques to improve your creativity by allowing yourself to actually see what is in front of you.It is about the very essence of the creativity that many of us have but relatively few actually free up and use.

5 pages in to "Photography and the Art of Seeing", I can tell this book will change how I take pictures.

I enjoyed the author's approach, zeroing in on the side of photography that is often ignored in favor of the technical aspects. I felt that the photographs themselves could have been better chosen to demonstrate a wider range of approaches. Overall, though, an excellent and useful book.

I've been reading Freeman's books for decades and have learned a great deal and been inspired to follow my dream further with every book. This book is simply 'a must read' book for any photographer who wants to do more than documentary work. While this is an easy read in the sense of language used, it is very challenging. You can read it quickly and get lots of good ideas and move on or you can read it carefully, study and practice what Freeman is giving us, and become much more adept at engaging your audience.

I'd always been looking for a photography book that teaches the core principles of visualising in photography. This book does that really well! Even my cousin who is a professional photographer said the book was well worth reading. It tries to lead the reader to think about non-technical aspects of photography. The book is divided into 3 main sections: 1) observation, 2)imagination and 3)expression. Patterson talks about these key topics in detail, and gives simple exercises to lead the reader to follow his train of thought. Essentially, the book teaches us to let go of ourselves, and think out of the 'box' that we have set for ourselves, with regards to the subject of photography.

its ok

It's as if Patterson wrote this book with me in mind. I'm a whiz when it comes to understanding technical things and probably know as much about how to work a camera as anyone but when it came to "seeing" the shot it just wasn't there for me. So armed with expensive gear and knowing how to use it I was able to take what amounted to pretty snap shots. This book has started me down the path of seeing and feeling the shot and the results are already evident. My images already get more likes and thumbs up than ever before. I shoot fewer shots but have more keepers and my confidence is growing.To anyone considering this book I say buy it, read it and do the exercises he recommends. It's a real difference maker!