Developing Vision & Style: A Landscape Photography Masterclass [Paperback]

The title "Developing Vision & Style: a Landscape Photography Masterclass" sounds like it might be an instructional manual. But it is not, at least not in any conventional sense. Instead it is a collection of beautiful landscape photographs, along with a number of opinions, some of them profound and a few sophomoric, about the meaning of vision and style.

A substantial number of the pictures, although by no means a majority, were taken by the authors Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and David Ward, who are numbered amongst Great Britain's most distinguished landscape photographers. The remaining pictures were submitted by "aspiring photographers" who were invited to submit their pictures. Most of the pictures are of the intimate landscape type rather than the grand view. It seemed to me that there were a great number of lovely pictures of wet rocks and rocky shores.

The photographers were asked a number of questions like "what does vision mean to you"; and "how would you describe your vision"; and "what does style mean to you"; and "how would you describe your style"? Some of the answers are printed in proximity to the photographers' pictures.

The editors claim that the book teaches by "encouraging students...to ask themselves critical questions and to take a fresh look at their personal vision, along with the style they select to express it."

Perhaps this format would have been more effective if there had been some back and forth debate rather than just a collection of statements. It might also have been more like a true master class if the three authors had offered a critique of the vision and style of the participating photographers. Alas, the authors only comment on each others work, and then only to say how good it is.

At the same time I realize that it would have been hard to get any photographer to agree to have his work published if it were to be the subject of a critique. I also recognize that while trying to define vision and style may be difficult for any photographer, trying to get photographers to agree on such a subject may be impossible. At the same time it may be useful for the individual photographer's development to come to his or her own definition of vision and style.

In many ways, readers interested in this topic might do better to read Ward's book "Landscape Within: Insights and Inspirations for Photographers" in which Ward's discussions of vision and style are articulated in a better fashion. For those who want a book to help them to develop their vision and style more than just to define the terms, I recommend an old favorite, Freeman Patterson's "Photography and the Art of Seeing". Moreover, because I believe that understanding the landscape will help one develop one's vision and style. I recommend Niall Benvie's "Creative Landscape Photography (Creative Photography)".

For the creative photographer, vision and style are important issues, even though they may never satisfactorily be defined. If this book can help the photographer toward a definition, it will have served a good purpose. If not, at least there are a lot of lovely pictures.

I bought this book wanting to learn how good photographers go about developing a vision and a style. I would use that information to develop a vision I could articulate, rather than just stumble around with my current vision, "I take photographs with bright, vivid, happy colors that make people excited." (Boy, does that sound weak. Now you know why I need help.)

I was very disappointed. Not a single photographer defined their vision or told how they developed their own vision, or, for that matter, gave any advice at all about what a vision is.

I had hoped we would be given many different perspectives on "vision"...something like, "Here are the elements and factors that I feel go into making a vision." Given this kind of starting point, I could then add to the list of elements and refine them into my own, private, creation.

Alas, the first paragraph on the back cover of the book really tells you what you will read about throughout the 156 pages:
"Photographic vision means seeing, as opposed to merely looking."

You hear this same theme repeated in a variety of ways by each of the contributors to the book. It is the closest any of them comes to defining "vision." I really learned very little in this book.

The photos were terrific, but I didn't want to buy a picture book. I really hoped to gain insight into how I could go about deliberately developing a vision that I could explain to others.

I've just finished reading Developing Vision and Style, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. The book's images are uniformly beautiful and reproduced very well, even in the paperback edition of the book I bought.

After a dozen or two images, though, all that uniformity starts to grate. It seems to me that there is a certain sameness to many of the landscapes, and it shows up right on the front cover: rocks in the foreground, dramatic sky, optional body of water. The images that don't follow this formula stand out by comparison.

This is a little odd in a book that is meant to be about developing vision and style. Although the authors and other contributors talk at length about their unique visions and styles, there isn't always a lot of uniqueness on display. I was also struck by how little insight was to be gained on the photographers' vision and style: very few were able to articulate what characterized their own work, never mind offer readers useful direction on developing theirs.

The book is beautiful and the notes on how individual images were made are often interesting. The text is not nearly as interesting, though, and the title promises more than the authors deliver. I'll open it again, but I think I'll just look at the pictures...

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