I think I refer to David duChemin in my words way more times than I am comfortable with. But there is a reason for that. He’s been a big source of inspiration since I read his first book, Within The Frame more than 7 years ago. For me to put down my thoughts about photography on paper – and not occasionally to refer to what I have learnt from David would be disingenuous. There simply is no other photographer who has influenced my way of thinking more than David duChemin.
Having now read and studied lot more photographers of past, I think it’s fair to say that most of what David preaches is nothing new – many photographers before him have said similar things. But I don’t think there’s another photographer who puts these concepts as eloquently and in an as relatable way as David does. I think it is fair to say that if it wasn’t for his books, blogs, videos and podcasts, I probably won’t be doing photography today.
This is why I got excited when I learnt that David will be releasing a new book called The Soul of The Camera: The Photographer’s Place in Picture-Making.
I even managed to snap one of the limited edition signed copies from the Craft & Vision website. Included with the purchase were two of David’s photography prints a pdf copy of the book. At the time of the purchase, pdf copy was promised to be delivered digitally on 15 June 2017. Well, the Christmas has come early. Yesterday, I logged into my email to find a link to the download the book exactly two weeks before the promised release. The hard copy will be in the mail next week.
I read the Introduction in the book and the theme of the book is along the same lines as before – gear is good, Vision is better but I think this book may just be the most personal that David has written. And like a typical David duChemin book, the Introduction is full of quotable quotes. Consider the following three,
It is not the sharpness of the image to which people will respond. They will not, one day in the distant future, speak about your stunning histograms.
It’s time now to turn our attention to what is ultimately responsible for making the photographs – the photographers themselves.
It is we who put the humanity, the vision and the poetry into our photographs.
When I first learned that this book was coming out, I decided that I was going to review it and leave it at that – but I am now thinking of doing at least three posts around the book. If this post is a foreword to the review, I hope to follow it up with a full review and an afterword.
So stay tuned – I hope to read it over the next week and have the review out by next weekend.
Meanwhile, if you are interested, you can purchase the book directly from the Soul of the Camera website, Book Depository or Amazon (last two are affiliate links). You can also read a sample of the book here.
