Today’s Post by Joe Farace
We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us. – Ralph Hattersley
Unlike a couple of my friends and my wife I’m not into meditation, not even a little bit but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe that some introspection isn’t helpful for improving your photography or just plain helping you enjoy photography more, something I think mirrorless cameras can do better than many DSLRs.
The back story: When teaching at a workshop in Montana a few years ago, an attendee asked all of the instructors what our favorite photography books were. They were surprised by my answer because is was not about digital photography. When it come to photography books, my number one recommendation is Discover Your Self Through Photography by the late Ralph Hattersley (1921-2000.) The amazon price seems a bit high but you might find better prices on eBay and it’s worth searching out in used book stores too.
Mr. Hattersley was a noted photographic educator who taught photo-illustration and art-based photography classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology for thirteen years. Beginning in 1957 he served as a Contributing Editor to Popular Photography magazine where he wrote a monthly column called ‘The Hattersley Class For Beginners, which during that time was an outsized influence on my own photographic endeavors.
How I Made this Photograph: I made this image in Zion National Park while hiking with my wife and some other photographers. The camera used was a Pentax K100D when I was writing the Magic Lantern Guide for this camera. I think a version of this image appears in the book. The camera used was that selfsame Pentax K100 D and smc Pentax-DA 12-24mm F4 ED AL [IF] lens with a Program mode exposure of 1/45 sec at f/4.0 and ISO 400. It was slightly overexposed so I applied the inverse of the technique used for underexposed portraits then converted the image to monochrome with Silver Efex using it’s Full Dynamic (harsh) preset and then applying platinum toning from PhotoKit.
What’s in the book?
Here’s a sample of the some of the chapter titles, which themselves should show you that this is the most unique book ever written about photography.
Discover Both Sides Of Yourself
Fight Your Way Out Of The Bag
Discover Your Own Secret Symbols
Photography May Be The Practice Of Religion For You. (You never saw that one coming I bet.)
It should surprise no one that Discover Your Self Through Photography was written in 1971. There’s probably more than a bit of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in Hattersley’s writing and the content reflects the times. These were also times that I consider to be the most creative in my life. So if you want to try something to give your photography a gentle shock treatment, spend 15 minutes a day quietly reading several pages from “Discover Your Self Through Photography and then work on some of the suggested lessons.
If you enjoy books, not just about photography, I would suggest that you follow the Joe’s Book Club posts that appear here (theoretically) every other Saturday although lately it has been a bit sporadic.