Photographing the World Around You: A Visual Design Workshop

Frances Emery is an editor and writer in Nepean, Ontario.

This latest volume by one of Canada’s most respected photographers is
based on a series of workshops Freeman Patterson has given on the theme
of design in photography. In it, he discusses “the building blocks of
visual design” (light, the raw material, shape, line, texture, and
perspective) and “putting the building blocks together” (dominance,
balance, proportion, and rhythm). Patterson uses a portfolio of his own
photographs to demonstrate his principles.

The serious reader is urged to complete a series of assignments
designed to encourage lateral thinking, and to visualize with the
imagination as much as with the eyes. Patterson does not provide rules,
but rather encourages the photographer to discover how to break free of
rules as such. The assignments he has chosen to illustrate his points
are interesting (and often unusual), and the reader is struck by the
enormous amount of film he shoots on any one of them (there are more
than 1000 images of a single paperweight). Patterson then uses his own
work to discuss why one photo of a particular study works while another
does not.

This is not a picture book, nor is it concerned primarily with the
craft of photography. While it touches on techniques, its insights are
principally on the study of photography as an art form. Besides being a
valuable reference tool for the serious student of the photographic
arts, the book has much to offer hobby photographers who wish to improve
their skills and enrich their visions of the world.