Journal: Re-evaluating Hedgecoe

So I've been a bit frustrated with the lack of direction in Hedgecoe's book, as I've noted in all four projects so far. But a lot of my problem isn't just the scant direction... it's the scant substance. Each topic takes up two pages, more than half of which is filled with photos. The text explaining the photos is extremely brief, and the overall text explaining the topic may be as short as fifty words. It's just not saying much. So I don't really feel like I'm learning anything.

Much of the reason I started this workshop series was to get me out and shooting, and even if I wasn't learning lots, it would be great if it were doing this. But the lack of direction has really made it harder. I'm not told what to do with texture, just that I'm supposed to take some kind of photograph in which texture plays some kind of role.

It's possible that I could, as I mentioned earlier, glean direction from his examples and their titles. Such as, in "Project 8 - Restrained Color Usage", I could take photos that show "Deep Shadow," "Sun and Shade," and "Sunlight and Fill-in Flash". So that would help, but even so... I just feel like there isn't much being taught here. It seems that Hedgecoe's idea here is that you'll just go out and take lots of photos and learn something of the art of composition along the way. And if it clearly worked that way, I wouldn't have bought a book, now would I?

Recently, many people have recommended The Photographer's Eye, by Michael Freeman, as the best book on composition ever. I wasn't in the market to buy a new book, but the name sounded familiar. And then someone reminded me why... he wrote the Amphoto Photography Workshop Series book, Image: Designing effective pictures, published in 1988. I bought this book when it was new and it's still in my library. So I started re-reading it, not having looked at it for nearly twenty years. About three days later, I ordered The Photographer's Eye.

While Image is a "workshop" book, there are precious few explicit assignments. Enough to make it obvious that there are assignments, but not enough to really make it a "workshop". But I don't care about that. Freeman talks about the subject, and draws diagrams illustrating the principles... disassembling the photograph visually to explain framing, visual weight, lines and so on. He doesn't make a topic fit into just two pages... he takes as many pages as it takes.

And the person who pointed out Images as being his book says that TPE is even better. I figure it's worth $20.50.

So I'm thinking, if I have to make up my own assignments out of the text, I might as well abandon Hedgecoe and go with a book that actually explains the elements of a good photograph in a way I understand. If I didn't have TPE to do it out of, I'd do it out of Image.