Look, everyone deserves a modicum of respect; so when I finished going through “The Rules of Photography” I received from Focal Press and found myself wondering aloud “Is this guy someone’s brother/brother-in-law/son/cousin at Focal Press or the Taylor & Francis Group that they actually published this thing?” I decided I had to do an online search for him and his photography. (The information presented within IS THAT BAD, THAT INCONSEQUENTIAL to anyone other than the individual who has never seen or held a camera in their hands, who has never thought about composition or “art” or expressing oneself with pencil scratches or crayon drawings or doodling on a sidewalk with chalk like a 5-year-old. O.K., perhaps I’m being a bit harsh here. He has two other books published by FP; but based upon what I saw here ain’t no way in the world I’m going to squander my precious time!) And btw, his photos are not all that bad. Alright already; so let’s get positive here. His writing style is both conversational and unassuming. It reads much like having a warm chat with a friend and I find this most endearing. The book seems an almost perfect fit for the individual new to photography or for someone teaching an Intro Photo course. His initial chapter – on cameras, lenses and basic photo concepts is both concise and pretty much accurate. The information comes in tiny snippets – oh-so perfect in this texting, Twitter-centric world of “I gotta short attention span” we live in today. Because the author makes his points in only a paragraph or two this book would be a perfect fit in a classroom environment where the instructor intends to go into more detail answering questions prompted by Kamps’ spare writing style. HOWEVER, as one moves on into the book, as Haje begins to explain “the rules” more and then how to break’em I found his explanations quite ham-fisted and less than effectual in their presentation. As well, I found the content afforded to be profoundly incomplete, ever so fragmentary and in some cases downright erroneous. "Examples please!" I could go on, but why bother? Often Mr. Kamps seems only to be grasping at straws as he moves through “the rules” and even quite a few of the photos he has chosen to illustrate the points he is making are really less than convincing or illustrative of the proposition. Well this one is being donated to the local public library. I can’t (in good conscience) give this away to someone in my Meetup group, a client, student, neighbor or friend. Yikes. |
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