Seeing Things

Seeing Things: A Kid's Guide to Looking at Photographs, Joel Meyerowitz, 2016

今年26冊目書評。

As it is the case for all other things which require sense of beauty, the best way to improve photo shooting is to see great photos, articulate why they’re great and practice as much as possible. Books stores in Japan are full of photo books, but many focus too much on how to take photos according to circumstances, e.g. “way to take photos of flowers”, “how to photo-shoot dishes”, etc. They may help (in fact I personally feel like they're bullshit), but following the advice would never let you reach to the point.

“Seeing Things”, authored by Joel Meyerowitz, a Guggenheim Fellow photographer, is a great book in that it focuses on explaining why great photos are great. The author chose 20 brilliant photos and tells us what we should look at in them. Although the title is "Kid's Guide" and surelly it works for kids, even adults would enjoy the book and learn a lot.  

I was going to have a photo lesson for my employees who very often take photos of our microfinance clients. I’ll probably use this book as a text.