Vision and Voice – A Review

Vision & Voice by David duChemin

So you’ve got a nice new book that will help you produce the photos in the way you’ve always wanted, you fire up the computer and begin crawling through the tutorials. At least that’s what you do with most books – not so with “Vision and Voice. Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom” by David duChemin. Instead, let me suggest you do the following; put the camera batteries on charge, make a pot of coffee, find a nice comfy chair and relax.

This book sounds like it’s going to be full of little hints and tips but the first screenshot doesn’t appear until chapter six. What David does from the outset of this book is emphasise how it is the reader’s vision of what he saw when he took the photograph that is important.

This is quite a difficult and convoluted subject to tackle and David does so by seemingly endless use of metaphor. This really works because of the difficult nature of the subject. David is trying to put into real terms an abstract idea. He does this so well and with such passion that it is for this reason I suggest the first thing you do is put the camera batteries on charge. By the time I had reached chapter four I was itching to get out with my camera, to explore the ideas and concepts outlined in the early part of this book.

The second section of Vision and Voice looks at the various tools available within Lightroom and gives a brief overview of what each one does as well as descriptions of sliders and buttons. As this book is aimed at the intermediate to advanced user this section isn’t too in depth. The whole idea of this book is to encourage you to find your own “vision”, to pick up the tools and run with it.

The last section, comprised of 20 smaller sections, is a look at some of David’s photographs with explanations of how he worked on them within Lightroom. Again, David is keen to point out that you should be finding your own vision and gives us these examples of his work flow for the reader to use as a kind of template, but not to copy.

What we also have running throughout the book are images produced by David that are stunning. With each image comes a wealth of information that in itself is a great learning tool. Next to each image we are told the camera, lens, shutter speed, f-stop and ISO as well as a brief background of the story behind the image.

In summary, don’t expect to pick up this book and instantly improve all your old images. What you can expect is to be inspired to create new and better images and then give them your own stamp, your own vision and your own finesse. If you’ve been taking photographs for a while and never found your niche, pick up this book, read the first 45 pages and grab your camera.

Some other posts by TipSquirrel

• Lightroom 3 Series
• Photoshop Nuts, Lightroom and Thanks
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One : A Review
• The Navigation Panel
• Photoshop Short Cut Keys
• Photoshop CS5 The Missing Manual : A Review
• July on TipSquirrel.com
• Another Multi-choice Photoshop Quiz

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