A simply stunning book that will stretch and expand you.
Window Seat
The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking
By Julieanne Kost
O’Reilly, 2006
ISBN: 0 596 10083 3
This amazing book is part exhibition and part exposition. The exhibition part comes in the second half of the book and comprises stunning work the author has produced by shooting from her seat on the commercial airliners in which she spends a lot of her time. The exposition section in the front of the book focuses on how to be and remain creative. An appendix gets into the imaging techniques she uses.
The Art of Creative Thinking is a relatively short but perfect eighteen point coverage of how to be and remain creative. These points are all incisive and engagingly discussed with a personal perspective. This section is also beautifully illustrated with the author’s images.
Window Seat has page after page of truly stunning images that illustrate the adage that there is always something to photograph, you just have to see it. Even this section is a direct teaching vehicle, because it is broken into sections with a one page discussion of the appropriate topic. These sections are:
* Desperately Seeking Creativity
* The Perfect Subject
* Control
* Capturing a Moment
* Editing
* Image Manipulation
* Completion
The Imaging Techniques appendix does a great job in a compact space of covering the core techniques that you need to consider and how to use them. Sections cover:
* Capturing Images
* File Management
* Processing using Adobe Camera Raw
* Image Size and Cropping
* Removing Imperfections
* Making Tonal Changes
* Selective Adjustments
* Masking
* Adding False Color
* Saving Files
* Preparing Images for Print
This book deserves to be on every photographer’s bookshelf. To me it sits with Caponigro’s book as must have books on the use of digital tools for the crafting of great photography. This book expands that beautifully with the work on creativity and with stunning examples of what can be captured from a seemingly uncreative position, business plane travel. Buy this book, you will not regret it.