Craft & Vision : Safari - A Monograph. The Print and The Process

As the second release in Craft & Vision’s The Print and The Process, we travel on safari with David du Chemin to Kenya to look at a variety of issues concerned with creating these images, including gear, techniques and the overall why and how these images were made. Read on for the review, and to find out how you can win your choice of 5 eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection.

Safari : A Monograph opens with a beautiful photograph of a leopard on a dead tree branch staring into empty space, and continues inside with a further 36 images inside, including African wildlife, hot-air ballooning, landscapes, tribal portraits and village life. Each of the photographs is presented on its own page to open the 62 page eBook.

Following the photographs, David spends a few pages talking about the expectations and assumptions involved when photographing something that is different from what you usually photograph, including both the positive aspects of this as well as the negative counterparts. From there, he moves on to a more of a travel journal type narrative, briefly covering a day spent in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, while discussing the creative dangers involved.

It would be easy to spend a day in Kibera and emerge with stereotypical images of poor Africans living in squalor. But to what end? To make us feel like the hard-core photojournalist we never become?

After the above warning, David presents some possible solutions and ideas before moving on to his experiences on the Serengeti, with more about the preconceived expectations that plague us all. The reader gets an intimate look at the photographer’s thought process as he’s on his first safari, and then the self-questioning that takes place each night.

Some of the pages inside Safari.

On to the tools needed, and we get a detailed look at what equipment was used and more importantly, why. The gear talk here is not just telling you what you need but why it will be useful to you. Thise section concludes with a quick look at what worked and what wasn’t so necessary.

The next section is called Layers of Impact which David describes as “a photograph goes from mediocre to good to great depending on the strength of the layers of impact”. He then goes on to outline a method for achieving this. The text concludes with a summary of the trip in general, including the early morning hot air balloon ride.

Each of the earlier images is reproduced in a smaller size, with camera and lens data, as well as settings used noted, and a brief description of the image, the thought process and the emotions. As a special bonus, there’s also a link included where you can download the Lightroom preset that was used in many of the photographs.

Like all the other Craft & Vision eBooks, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this. There’s also a special offer:
For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code SAFARI4 when you checkout, you can have SAFARI, A Monograph for only $4 OR use the code  SAFARI20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more books from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST JULY 11, 2010.

I mentioned a chance to win 5 eBooks of your choice. To do so is simple. All you need to do is comment on any post on this site. This blog has now received close to 2000 comments. To celebrate, whoever leaves the 2000th comment, which should occur any time now, will win 5 eBooks of your choice from the Craft&Vision collection. Thanks for all the support.

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