Within the Frame by David duChemin

As a pho­tog­ra­pher, it’s both inspir­ing and mad­den­ing to see a beau­ti­ful pho­to­graph and won­der just how the pho­tog­ra­pher did it. I mean, there are pho­tographs that are really good, with excel­lent com­po­si­tion and beau­ti­ful light. And then there are pho­tos that tran­scend the really good; you don’t just appre­ci­ate them with your eyes alone but respond to them with your heart. Those are the pho­tographs I wanted to learn how to take.

Unfor­tu­nately, I couldn’t find a sin­gle book that talked about that. There were a lot of books about com­po­si­tion, tech­nique and gear – which were great, but noth­ing about how to dis­till moments of feel­ing into a sin­gle frame.

Until I found Within the Frame: The Jour­ney of Pho­to­graphic Vision by David duChemin. To be hon­est, I’ve wanted to write about this book for the longest time, but I kept putting it off because I have no idea how to sum­ma­rize a book which I’ve learned so much from. In the end, I think the best way for me to put it is to put it bluntly; this book changed my game.

It helped me move up from tak­ing pho­tos like these of Japan in 2008:

To pho­tos like these in 2009:

I’m not sure if the dif­fer­ence is as obvi­ous to you, but it sure is to me. With­out hav­ing read Within the Frame just before I left for Japan in 2009, I couldn’t have improved as much as I did. I’m pretty sure of that, as I pur­posely set out to apply what I’d learned from the book.

duChemin is prob­a­bly best known now as the “gear is good, vision is bet­ter” guy, and he lays out that idea in Within the Frame. It doesn’t read so much as a “how to shoot” book as a “how to think about what you shoot” book. How do you shoot what moves you? How do you use uni­ver­sal themes and con­flict to tell a story within a frame? How do you shoot peo­ple, places and cul­tures in ways that are specif­i­cally your own?

In short, Within the Frame is a gem. I didn’t just learn how to tell sto­ries within a frame – to make a pho­to­graph not of some­thing but about some­thing – but also how to sharpen, express and chase a per­sonal pho­to­graphic vision. Highly recommended.

Note: David duChemin has two sequels to Within the Frame; Vision­Mon­gers: Mak­ing a Life and a Liv­ing in Pho­tog­ra­phy, which I’m read­ing now, and Vision & Voice: Refin­ing Your Vision in Adobe Pho­to­shop Light­room, which was just pub­lished and I’m eagerly wait­ing for. He also runs an insight­ful blog and an ebook store Craft & Vision, which sells great pho­tog­ra­phy ebooks at very low prices.

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