Craft & Vision – The Free eBook

A couple months ago I asked the photographers who write for Craft & Vision, if they’d help me put together a free eBook. I asked them to help me make something that we could just give away (as in FREE, no catches) to the photography community, especially to the students and enthusiastic amateurs among us. They responded really excitedly. The only guidance I gave them was this: it had to about something that could improve the craft of beginners or even advanced amateurs, it had to be something they cared about, and it couldn’t be recycled stuff from something they’d already written. In the end we put together 11 great essays that together will help photographers improve what they do.

This is practical stuff, not just 11 versions of “Improve your vision” or “Practice A Lot.” Eli Reinholdtsen wrote about the power of moments. Nicole S. Young wrote about more intentional compositions. Andrew S. Gibson wrote about personal projects and collaboration while Alexandre Buisse discussed sharing our work as a means to growth. Piet Van den Eynde, in his usual style, gave me two articles—one about giving your images a greater sense of energy, the other about seeing beyond the usual stereotypes about lenses. Landscape photographer Michael Frye talks about learning to direct the eyes of the readers of our photographs. Stuart Sipahigil wrote about slowing down and learning to see. An upcoming C&V author, Martin Bailey, sheds some light on printing. And I’ve chimed in with an article about taming digital exposures and creating stronger portraits.

Together we’ve tried to create something that is, and will always be, free. But more than that, we wanted it to be helpful. What we got was more than just amazing content – it’s almost 70 gorgeous pages and I’m really proud of the Craft & Vision family for creating it together. We welcome you to download it, to learn from it, and to tell others about it. It wasn’t specifically meant to be released around the holidays, because I think generosity should be a 12-month-a-year thing, but since it’s December 1st, let me also take this chance, on behalf of the whole Craft & Vision team, to wish you happy holidays and peace and beauty as the new year comes. If you download this and love it, would you help us spread the love and tell others? We’ll pay for the bandwidth if you’ll tweet about it, blog it up, and Facebook the heck out of it.