How important is it to study photography through the library? What books do you recommend for beginners? What are the best photo books?
>>4465912Once you have the basics down, it really depends. You gotta remember that just because information is in a book, it does not mean that it's useful, relevant, contemporary or even true. My preferred method of study is to go through photo books of popular artists I like, and then write down what I like about each picture, articulating which techniques they used and how it compliments the messages in the body of work. I find this way it helps you fit techniques into your own style moreso than just mimicking another artists whole process.
>>4465913Extremely based This is the best advice plus pic related Art stems from art. It is total fucking bullshit that you can be a great photographer without getting inspired from other great photographers. You gotta mix and merge your influences and see where it leads to develop your own unique style. Experience on its own doesn't leads you anywhere, it is modern mental illness that if you become sincere your art will somehow become great over night. You can only develop your art by standing on the shoulders of giants. Study and practice both go hand in hand. Final word on gear is that camera is nothing more than an empty box. Right tools for the right job is the motto. All depends what you want to achieve and then select your tools according. Always work with the best tools available but you gotta know what you want. If you can't afford best tools then you gotta work with what's available. Limitations(even in art) are great, they teach us a lot of great things.
Here's some great advice from /lit/:Creativity is mostly the invocation of tropes your brain has subconsciously picked up on but you're not aware of. That's why when you have a group of beginners on a similar creative pursuit (e.g. film school) they all put out very similar shit (e.g. the student short about suicide or hitmen, the opening scene where an alarm clock goes off, the shot inside a fridge, etc.) even though they're not consciously trying to recreate the same thing, they just happen to share the same set of references that they've picked up from other places.Most of the time, people have a very narrow and unimpressive arsenal of templates to recruit from, because the human memory is really bad for art. Memorizations requires repetition over time, so even your "passive" memory needs to see something several times before you can use it, which means more often than not you're just writing things that are so cliche and predictable that your brain has learned to emulate from constant exposition to it.This is also, btw, why a lot of people consider drugs a good creative enhancement. The same way people under the influence often see or remember things from their past that they had completely forgotten about, they also start using things that their memory has sort of buried because it was not seen as frequently as the stuff closer to the surface, so the odds are that it's a lot more unique.
>>4465924So if you want to improve your craft, the trick is memorization, it's to replace your current arsenal with a new one through the practice of repetition. Read passages you liked again and again, read a particular phrase you enjoyed again and again, drill anything you like into your brain until you can write it yourself from memory. Read the same book again and again, engaging different parts of your brain: read it, read it making a closer inspection of the language, then read it again paying more attention to the rhythm and how things flow, etc. Once your subconscious grabs those and breaks them into something more abstract, it will intuitively spill into your writing. And of course, practice, but practice while rejecting the stuff that feels too easy or automatic. Learn to engage a deeper set of tools you have but you don't often use, ignore the stuff that comes easily and wait for the stuff that needs its time to arrive, it will become easier to find that spot later if you do it often.
>>4465912>What books do you recommend for beginners?On Being a Photographer(chapter on subject is essential) by David Hurn >What are the best photo books?My favorite photographers/photobooks: >A Hunter by Daido Moriyama >William Mumler>Ravens by Masahisa Fukase >Eugene Atget>Drum by Krass Clement>Paris by Night by Brassai >William Mortensen >Edward S Curtis >Emmet Gowin >The Eye of War by Dieter Keller >Last Cosmology by Kikuji Kawada >The Pond by John Gossage >Joan Fontcuberta(early work)
This thread is off to an interesting start, thanks anons.
>>4465924Creativity may be mostly the invocation of tropes if you set out to make the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises. Seriously each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody? Just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.>a-at least the books were good though"No!"The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
>>4466021Wrong. Thread is trash so far. Recommending to sniff the farts of other photographets won't help anyone. What a shit board /p/ has become.Completely useless.
>>4465912>How important is it to study photography through the library?I got all my inspiration to pursue photography from watching cinema and that's still where I get a lot of inspiration for framing. I don't like people to look at the camera for this very reason. My advice is to watch movies a lot.
>>4465912>>4466176I also got a lot of inspiration from art books, especially Van Gogh and Picasso. You will have different tastes but, when you find an artist whose work you like, devour it. >Good artists copy; great ones steal.
>>4466027>1984 above Brave New World
This is one of the best threads in the catalog right now. There are lots of photo books from famous photographers available online as PDFs for free if you're willing to download them from sketchy Russian sites. Very interested to see the suggestions from other anons.
>>4466197Anon, don't you realize the recs are garbage?
>>4466198some are, some aren't. I trust that I am discerning enough to look at a recommended artist and tell if it is any good or not
>>4466202>I am discerning enough to look at a recommended artist and tell if it is any good or notYou are not. You're a pleb shitting up /p/ with newb faggotry and retarded opinions.gtfo >>>/reddit/
>>4465912>What books do you recommend for beginners?Used ones. Most of the books that Hedgecoe wrote were pretty decent, especially given that you can usually find them for next to nothing at used book stores; the Photographer's Handbook covers everything from the basic operating principles of cameras to darkroom work and his specialized books are hit-and-miss. Practical Landscape Photography is excellent but I wasn't impressed with his book on nudes.Worth noting is that pretty much all of them assume you're going to be using film, though. Lots of information in there about doing random crap with film that's been the domain of digital-post processing for decades now and on top of that there's nothing about DOING said digital post-processing so your mileage may vary.
>>4466276Next time make your bait more subtle.
>>4466027The art of Harry Potter is its world that makes you think you beling in it and you like the idea of being there. That's it. Eveyhing else (including assorted villains, movies, videogames, and Rowling's shitposting on Twitter) is secondary.> But Rowling is le badYeah, maybe. A better writer had all the time in the world to step up and write a better book about a magical school, but he didn't and now it's too late.
>>4466027(((Ayn rand))) singlehandedly convinced americans that if they didnt let corporations fuck them over then they could not have freedom themselvesEthical consistency: the undoing of man
