Vision is Better 2
Free the mind. Free the camera. Again.
Sounds all very new-age but the closest this latest Craft and Vision release comes to an “om” is with pictures from the Indian subcontinent. What it is however is a collection of 44 essays and discussions by David duChemin. With a couple of exceptions, they have all appeared on his blog over the past 18 months or so. In that time David has gone from being a busy assignment photographer to clientless (by choice). From jetting about the world and driving across the US to confined to bed. This eBook could quite easily have been subtitled “An Eventful Journey” because that’s what it’s been, both in the physical sense and the mental / emotional. The collected essays provide a look at that journey and offer lessons on life and photography that will resonate with a lot of people. Click here to view more details
Before I jump more into this, I just want to remind you that I released my Winter 2011 newsletter last week. This is the first edition of my newsletter redesign which will now appear quarterly. Winter 2011 is a 19 page PDF that features some on-assignment work, new unpublished photographs, a review of David duChemin’s book Photographically Speaking, an interview with Steve Peer of Phottix, a look at some underwater gear and more. Click here to go to it and don’t forget to sign up in the side bar for future editions.
The keen-eyed will notice that I mentioned that most of these essays have already been published. So why then would someone want to spend $5 to get something that is available elsewhere for free. Leaving aside the inclusion of a couple of unpublished essays and the wealth of additional photography, is there any reason to fork out the cash for it? Fortunately, the answer is yes.
Whenever I discover a new photographer, I like to take the time to dive into their blog archives and read some of the stuff from the past. After that, I’ll keep paying attention to their new posts but will only return to the older ones if I’m looking for something different. David’s blog is the one exception to this, and on his blog I’ll often dive into a month of his archives and read posts at random, especially when I need something to spur my own creativity along. The Pixelated Image blog is the only one of all the hundreds and thousands of blogs I’ve seen that I can do that with, and I’ve been doing that for a few years now. Vision Is Better II therefore gives me a large collection of those posts in a single location that I can read anywhere and anytime. I love reading the comments and discussion that goes along with blogposts but when they stretch to over 100 comments in some instances, it’s easy to lose track of what the central point of the actual post was. Comments can and do go off-topic and as valuable as that can be, it’s actually the blog author’s ideas I’m there for first of all. Having these essays collected in one publication without the associated discussion makes the themes of the essays flow better and links between two or more different articles become more obvious and apparent.
The opening essay, Going Backwards, Moving Forwards, is new and previously unpublished. Think of it as an overview of the past year and a half in David’s life. If you’re a new fan who’s just discovered the Pixelated Image blog, then this will get you quickly up to speed on an eventful 18 months. The included work follows a chronological progression beginning from the end of May 2010 and walks through photography techniques, creative blockages, personal achievements and struggles, adventures, a rant or two, and a lot of inspiration. The second previously unpublished article You’re On Your Own encourages you to get out there and take those final steps towards becoming the photographer you desire to be.
Read the essays in order, or dive in at random. Each of them exists on its own but there is also flow from one to the next. This flow is one of the main strengths of this publication – the connecting strands of ideas from essay to essay are more obvious when published in this form than when published days or weeks apart on the blog. To give an example, the essay Beyond Craft, originally published at the beginning of September 2010 is immediately followed by Wrestling in Kathmandu from October 2010. A month and seven blog posts initially separated them but when reading them placed next to each other in Vision Is Better II, the relationship between them is immediately evident, a relationship I probably never would have noticed otherwise. This is one of the key strengths of this book. Even someone who has previously read all the blog posts, the sequencing will offer you new insights and ideas.
Special Offer on PDFs (CHRISTMAS EXTENSION)
For the first nine days only, if you use the promotional code VIB4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Vision is Better II for only $4 OR you can use the code VIB20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST December 21, 2011. Click here to view more details
As an additional offer, use the code VIB7 to get the Vision Is Best bundle for $3 off. Click here to view more details
