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| The Art of Black and White Photography: Techniques for Creating Superb Images in a Digital Workflow | 
 enlarge | Author: Torsten Andreas Hoffmann
Publisher: Rocky Nook
Category: Book
List Price: $44.95
Buy New: $25.63
You Save: $19.32 (43%)
Buy New/Used from $25.63
Avg. Customer Rating:  (4 reviews)
Sales Rank: 17773
Format: Illustrated
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 8.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 193395227X
Dewey Decimal Number: 778.3
EAN: 9781933952277
ASIN: 193395227X
Publication Date: May 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Over the last few years, most books on photography emphasized explaining the new breed of cameras and how to master the digital imaging workflow. In iThe Art of Black and White Photography/i Torsten Andreas Hoffmann takes a different approach, as he focuses on image composition and image capture, with an emphasis on the creative aspects of black and white photography, rather than on the digital workflow. p After introducing the ground rules of composition, the author illustrates their applications with various photographic genres such as architecture, street photography, portraiture, and surreal photography with his own stunning black and white images. In the second part of the book, Hofmann illustrates the elements of a photographic language , which distinguishes creative photography from random shooting. The final part of the book is dedicated to post-processing techniques, mostly in Photoshop (CS3), emphasizing the functions that are necessary for creating outstanding black and white images.
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| Customer Reviews:
Engrossing study of photographic composition December 1, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a thorough, well crafted study of photographic composition that will interest all serious photographers, whether working in B W or in color. As another reviewer here points out, Hoffmann's book belongs alongside Harald Mante's The Photograph: Composition Color Design and Michael Freeman's The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos. Together, these three texts provide serious photographers with a master class in composition. But I stress *serious photographer*: Hoffmann, Freeman, and especially Mante will not be easily accessible to anyone just starting out. br /br /There are four sections in Hoffmann's book. The second and third - "Photographic Genres and Concepts" and "Rules of Composition" - are the meatiest and worth the cost of the book. Hoffmann writes with conviction and seldom minces words. For example, he admonishes the reader to avoid the "cliched photograph," which he describes as "a shortened, simplified reproduction of a popular idea or image, "a poor copy, an imitation" that need be neither "profoundly experienced by the photographer or audience" nor "result from original thinking" (p. 31). That's strong stuff.br /br /Hoffmann has an unconventional strategy to help photographers move "from cliched photo to personal expression" (p. 33). Eschewing the all-too-common cookbook approach, Hoffmann instead wants photographers to do some actual thinking by answering three questions: "What really interests and fascinates me? In what facets of the exterior world do I most likely find myself? What are my most prominent emotions?" The questions derive from Hoffmann's conviction that personally expressive images have two basic "qualities": They show both "an authentic instant in the exterior world" and "the photographer's inner world of feelings and ideas" (p. 32). br /br /For Hoffmann, then, as also for Freeman and Mante, good photography is intentionally creative, not reactive. He argues that by understanding what attracts them photographically and why, photographers will be much better prepared to seek out and capture original, personally expressive images. I find his ideas here both refreshing and persuasive.br /br /In addition to chapters on mood in black and white photography (an important recurrent theme in Hoffman's book), section 2 provides an extended survey of photographic genres (e.g., street, landscape, architectural, abstract, surreal, portraits, panoramic). The genre chapters feature overviews of the relevant genre's evolution, with references to the work of representative contemporary photographers, all spiced by Hoffmann's observations about the creative possibilities of the various genres. This occasionally dogmatic commentary will discomfit some readers. For example, regarding landscape photography, Hoffmann asserts that "the representation of unspoiled, idyllic scenes in today's world will probably not be satisfactory" and that "In contemporary photography, there are almost no important photographers that take idyllic scenes" (p. 53). Landscape photography has certainly changed during the past fifty years, but Hoffmann's generalizations nonetheless border on the tautological (if no important photographers make images of idyllic scenes, a photographer who does so is unimportant by definition).br /br /The third section of the book discusses various principles by which (paraphrasing Hoffmann) an event can be condensed to a composition (p. 136) by finding the heart of the image. American writers tend to emphasize the "rule of thirds," but Hoffmann prefers to start with the "golden ratio" because it defines "axes of symmetry" along which elements can be arranged. This may be a matter of training or taste, but the golden ratio seems more organically satisfying than does the rule of thirds. From here, Hoffmann goes on to discuss the use of triangles, rhythm, simplicity and contrast, framing, perspective, repetition, and still other compositional techniques.br /br /Sections 2 and 3 are well illustrated with Hoffmann's own work. Smaller images with lines superimposed illustrate the compositional rules being discussed, while larger images provide the basis of discussion. This is an especially helpful teaching device. Hoffmann is sometimes overly laudatory about his photos, many of which are outstanding . . . but not all. He seems to be reaching at times; the principle under discussion does not always seem well represented in the example image. Still, some of Hoffmann's photos are simply stunning and none of this detracts from the composition lessons being taught.br /br /I think this is a book that should be read attentively, and likely more than once. Hoffmann's compositional principles will be challenging to apply in the field. They require us to think a little differently about making photos, about what counts as a good image. But there's nothing wrong with that.br /
Well worth owning. October 20, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
"The Art of Black and White Photography", by Torsten Andreas Hoffman, is the latest Rockynook book that I have read. So far, only one Rockynook title has disappointed me. "The Art of Black and White Photography" was definitely not a disappointment.br /br /Black and white photography has interested me for some time, but I haven't really found the right subjects for it. When I thought I had a good candidate, it turned out to be much better in sepia than bw. This book went a long way in helping me to understand what subjects woiuld do better in black and white. It also presents a wealth of knowledge about using modern tools (Photoshop CS2 was quoted) to refine images and get the most out of the exposure. The insistence to shoot in RAW was spot on. I learned this the hard way, but if you haven't gone to that exclusively yet, you need to.br /br /While the title of the book implies exclusivity to B photography, there is still quite a bit of useful information that crosses over to the color world also. Since I plan to keep shooting color and selectively convert to black and white in post processing, I was happy to see this. Every aspect of photography is addressed - landscapes and portraits, motion and still life, day and night exposures, you name it. Extensive sections cover Genres and Concepts as well as Composition Rules. Perhaps most useful to me (and well worth the price of the book) is the last section covering "The Digital Darkroom". I love getting useful Photoshop tips, and this book does not disappoint. Hopefully future editions will also include Lightroom tips.br /br /"The Art of Black and White Photography" is one book that I could not put down once I started reading it, and I cannot wait to apply some of the concepts I learned.
Black and White is not dead - it has its advantages over the world of color. July 14, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Black and White is not dead - it has its advantages over the world of color. "The Art of Black and White Photography: Techniques for Creating Superb Images in a Digital Workflow" is a complete and comprehensive guide to the craft of taking photos in the style of black and white. Chapters discuss when black and white should be used rather than color, how to avoid the cliches so often associated with black and white, applying new technology to improve an old art, and much more. For anyone enthusiastic about photography, "The Art of Black and White Photography: Techniques for Creating Superb Images in a Digital Workflow" is a must-have.br /br /Diane C. Donovanbr /California Bookwatch
A Hearty Welcome to Another Top German Photographer/Author June 3, 2008
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is a welcome volume for BW photogs and a useful read for color photographers from another fine German photographer/author. This is Hoffmann's first instructional book to be published in English, although he has had numerous articles on image design/composition published in the magazine "Leica Fotographie International", or LFI, which, by the way, is not published by Leica-Camera GMBH.br /br /Hoffmann emphasizes the possibilities in tonal manipulation in digital and analogue photographing. The point of his presentation is always to show how manipulating the tones and, therefore, contrast, contributes to the design of the image with respect to the photographer's intentions. He spends a significant amount of space on showing how to elicit mood in various kinds of photographs (content).br /br /His chapters start with, what I find to be, rather interesting summaries of the chapter topic's history, significant practitioners, and current directions. Then he examines several of his own images in detail. His commentary on an image concentrates on the visual structure and on the darkroom and/or digital manipulations necessary to realize his intentions. The only other book that comes to mind for nearly such excellence in pictorial descriptions or captions is the first edition of Bill Smith's "Designing a Photograph," which sets the standard for applying the Gestalt visual psychological approach to analyzing image structure.br /br /Rather differently from the other two top volumes on image structure currently in print, Michael Freeman's "The Photographer's Eye," and Harald Mante's "The Photograph," Hoffmann spends significant time looking at the various genres of photographic subject matter and then covers composing/design from the point of view of visual tensions and abstract structure. There is overlap with both of the other volumes, but also depth and emphasis that is his own. Color is not part of the subject in this book, but color photographers will benefit from Hoffmann's insights into tonality, contrast, and structure in images.br /br /This book, IMHO, sort of completes the circle of really good books on photographic composition/design at the intermediate level. With this book, the years 2007 and 2008 have been the best in a few decades for the publication of outstanding books on design/composition, and it is interesting to this reviewer that the three best are by an English and two German photographer/authors . It just does not seem that US practioners are taught the nuts and bolts of visual design to any degree of depth and ability to articulate their thoughts about image structure. The ability of even world class US photographers to discuss the reasons that their images work in structural terms is relatively rare.br /br /I like this book enough to make a triumvirate of this one, Freeman's book, and Mante's book for readers interested in sophisticated, analytical approaches to visual design and image structure. The only thing I would wish for is that more of his photos be accompanied by those delightful little thumbnails with his structural line diagrams. The more of these there are in a book, the more an interested reader packs away in one's mental image databank for later resurrection and use.br /br /Some asides before I finish. Hoffmann gets more visual mileage from aircraft vapor trails than anyone else I know of. Most of us regard these as intrusions into the tranquility of our landscape images. But, in the venerable tradition of divorcing content from an image's abstract structure, and the role of structure being to support the content, Hoffmann integrates these features into his images so forcefully that to remove them would ruin the image. Bravo; Mante would be proud.br /br /Too, the basic structural architecure of many of his images rests upon the grid formed from the golden ratio approximations of breaking the height and width into 5/8th and 3/8th divisions. One advantage of this choice versus the preference of US photographers for the Thirds Rule is that the Thirds method breaks the space into nine identical rectangles - a recipe well on the way to boring space management. Yet, as shows Charles Bouleau in his seminal book, "The Painter's Secret Geometry," even relatively simple visual architectures in the hands of someone with excellent training and inspired talent yield captivating, dynamic images, while the plodders among us achieve less subtle and interesting results.br /br /I hope it will not be so long before Hoffmann gives us a volume on design in color photography.br /br /19 November 2008. I just read this book again. It is more satisfying, informative, and a pleasure to read than I realized the first time through. The second section covers thirteen genres or concepts, each one starting with a delightful essay that I began to look forward to in succeeding chapters. Beginning with a chapter on dealing with cliches and ending with a chapter on eliciting mystical elements from a subject and a chapter on panoramics, he deals with the major philosophical aspects relating to photography in each genre, how such issues have changed through the history of photography, sometimes the relationships to other visual arts, and some reference to major past and current practitioners.br /br /The third section presents fourteen aspects of composing images, from "what is composition" to movement in the image. The prefatory remarks are much more brief than in the genres/concepts section, but are insightful. His approach to composing emphasizes the principles of design and techniques of visualization and thinking to achieve the principles, and less concentration on the elements that one gets from Mante and Freeman.br /br /In all four sections of the book, when he discusses a photograph, he does it better, more thoroughly from a structural point of view, and at a higher level than most any other writing I have seen.br /br /I now feel that this book ranks right up there with Freeman and Mante as coequal in quality, depth, and level of presentation. These are the three strongest books on the composition/design subject in years. If you are interested in analytical, thinking, focussed approaches to making, understanding, and appreciating images, I cannot recommend too strongly owning and reading several times the three books by Freeman, Mante, and Hoffmann.br /
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