The Visual Story Teller

An e book from ODED WAGENSTEIN via Craft & Vision.

The book starts with the line “Understanding visual story telling is a craft and not a talent will help you put to use right away all the practical advice and creative exercises in this eBook”.  This line itself made me complete this book in one sitting. I rarely complete books in one sitting, either the book stops fascinating me in middle or my bad brain jumps in to something dominantly.

Every good story deals with universal emotions, every good story must have a leading character and this part is further explained by an image from history, yes if you hide that particular portion of the photograph and the photograph had failed to make any connection with the viewer, than the portion you hide is the leading character in the photograph. Every good story is about relationships, this portion is further explained by few of the author’s photographs by explaining the relationship it makes with the viewer, or the relationship between the characters within the photograph or the relationship between the leading character and the surroundings within the photograph. Every good story is about highlighting; the author now brings in master “Henri Cartier-Bresson” for storytelling, the decisive moment, and modern photo journalism. He is undoubtedly the master of composition, geometrical shapes, and people, decisive moment. – It is only once, the moment has gone, the chance for photographing is gone forever.  Do check out Henri’s works if you have a strong passion about streets and in general photography, even if you are doing fashion or food photography his work will help you improve your composition.

Author now takes us to the world of colours, how colour unknowingly impacts the viewer and how to play with colours, complimentary, vivid, bright colours. Off course when it comes to colour in photography nobody is afford to not talking about the painters from the past world. The author talks now about Vincent van Gogh’s works and the way he used complimentary colours. Like Gaugin said “Colour! What a deep mysterious language, the language of dreams”.

The importance of preparation prior to the shoot is the difference between the professional and the amateur author says. A professional starts working before leaving home, an amateur waits for the things to happen. ! Professionals will do their research, quickly gathering all the information needed to allow them enough time to create strong photographs.  The importance of pre visualization and the importance of being in a place at the right time or most of the times have to wait for that right time for the right things to happen.

Without talking about light, photography topics will not get complete, in this chapter author talks about the light and its effects on the photograph and usage of Flash and soft boxes. Portraits, shooting with passion, if there is no passion in what you do than there is no point in the doing itself. For the author it took six years to find his path, working with Magazines. Finally he talks about the equipments he uses, from camera, lenses, filter, flash, tripod, soft box etc, The book concludes with publishing your work online, offcourse he talks about fb and other online mediums to publish your work.

Overall a good quality of book and every passionate young photographer’s must read one and at a meager price, you are good to go. Check here and use the code STORY4 for a dollar discount. The author’s work are here. By the way David duChemin’s Craft & Vision is delivering good quality books from the very first.

When it comes to light there is a very good and simple free eBook here from Anne McKinnel.