Photographers are big on upgrading their gear, but often the best upgrade we can make is to our thinking. I’ve spent the last 15 years helping photographers do just that.
Light, Space & Time, 2024
Essays on Camera Craft and Creativity
A book about the craft of camera-using and the creative struggle of picture-making, Light, Space & Time is about the inner game of photography, and like most of my books is less about how we use a camera and more about how we think: about using a camera, about composition, what we hope to say, the risks we take, and more. Your camera came with some kind of instruction manual, but our most important tools are our thoughts and emotions; consider this the manual you never got for your creativity.
“Very few photographers articulate their craft, and fewer still rise above the mechanics or the well-worn themes. David is not only one of the small elite, but in this lovely book, graced with his very fine (and it seems mainly new) images, uses his considerable writing skills to enthuse and inspire others—and makes a coherent presentation of the elusive magic that we all know is at the heart of photography.” —Michael Freeman, author of The Photographer’s Eye
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
The Heart of the Photograph, 2020
100 Questions for Making Stronger, More Expressive Photographs
What if you were equipped to ask better, more constructive questions of your work so that you could think more intentionally and creatively, and in doing so, bring more specific action and vision to the act of creating photographs? What if asking stronger questions allowed you to establish a more effective approach to your image-making? The Heart of the Photograph helps you learn to ask better questions of your work in order to craft more successful photographs—photographs that express and connect, photographs that are strong and, above all, photographs that are truly yours.
“The Heart of the Photograph is a wonderful book packed with wisdom rooted in experience. David articulates some complex ideas, distilling them into clear writings and poignant questions, and prompting readers to consider what makes photography not only a means of making images, but also a means to a richer life, self discovery, and deeper engagement with the world.”―Guy Tal, author of More Than a Rock
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
The Soul of the Camera, 2017
The Place of the Photographer in Picture Making
The Soul of the Camera explores what it means to make better photographs. Illustrated with a collection of beautiful black-and-white images, the book’s essays address topics such as craft, mastery, vision, audience, discipline, story, authenticity, and so much more. The Soul of the Camera is a personal and deeply pragmatic book that challenges the idea that our cameras, lenses, and settings are anything more than dumb and mute tools. It is the photographer, not the camera, that can and must learn to make better photographs—photographs that convey our vision, connect with others, and, at their core, contain our humanity.
“David duChemin understands an important truth about photography: as photographers, what shapes our craft is how we see the world as humans, not the equipment we use or the situations we find ourselves in. The soul of the camera resides within our humanity, and duChemin does an amazing job of communicating how to access it.” —Paul Nicklen, National Geographic photographer
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
The Visual Toolbox, 2015
60 Lessons for Stronger Photographs
The Visual Toolbox is my most practical book. You could think of it as a curriculum for learning not just how to use a camera but how to make stronger photographs. 60 lessons to becoming more proficient with the tools of your art, and the means to create deeper visual experiences with your images. Chapter topics include vision, exposure, isolation techniques, colour use, abstraction, point of view, use of lines, light, and moments, photographing people, understanding visual mass, telling stories and so much more.
“This book is more helpful than most of the online photography workshops I’ve taken, and for a fraction of the price. I adore David duChemin’s writing, and actually bought this as an ebook about a year ago, but having it in paper form is just so nice. He also improved it since the ebook version, with more chapters and an even better layout. I love the exercises and his writing. If I were to teach a photography class, I would make all my students buy this book and we’d use it as a text. The best thing about it, is that it works at any experience level. I used it when I was still learning the exposure triangle and just starting to shoot in manual mode. And now that I’ve been comfortable in manual for a year, I still find this book really inspiring and challenging. You won’t be disappointed with this book.” —Tracy Swift, Amazon review
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
Within The Frame, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2019
The Journey of Photographic Vision
My first book and still my best-selling after 15 years, Within The Frame is a book about the passionate photography of people and places, though it’s arguably about so much more, it’s about personal vision and making photographs that are truly your own. Translated into over a dozen languages and now in it’s 3rd edition, it’s still as relevant as the day it first came out.
“If the book simply stayed right there in the realm of how-to, go-to advice, it would be a wonderful book indeed. But it crosses the line from useful to inspired because David opens up much more than his camera bag. He opens his considerable heart and mind, both of which belong to a masterful storyteller driven by an acute sympathy for the human condition, coupled with an intense curiosity and respect for both the differences and the sameness of the world.” —Joe McNally, photographer, author of The Moment it Clicks
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
A Beautiful Anarchy, 2016
When the Life Creative Becomes the Life Created
A Beautiful Anarchy is a vulnerable, honest, and insightful book about the human longing to create, whether you’re creating a family, a business, a book, or a photograph. Your greatest creation can be an intentional life lived on your own terms. What is our life but a chance to make the greatest art of all?
If you already identify as a creative person, this book is an invitation to more intentionally explore your creative process. If you’ve ever said, “But I’m not really creative,” it’s a call to exhume a part of yourself that desperately needs to get out and breathe.
“A Beautiful Anarchy is raw energy bundled up in a book, and opening its cover is like lighting a fuse. This isn’t an ordinary book. Its message is challenging and liberating at the same time. What I like best is that David’s words are grounded in a life that is well lived. Reading it is like gaining access to the mentor and friend I always wished I had. Read this book if you want to make more meaningful photographs and live a more complete life.”—Chris Orwig, author of The Creative Fight
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
START UGLY, 2020
The Unexpected Secret to Everyday Creativity
The poet Goethe is credited as saying, “What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it, and the work will be completed!” If only it were that easy.
In any creative effort, the beginning is the hard part, filled with fears and procrastinations, and—often most of all-the paralyzing desire to get it right on the first try (which almost never happens).
Start Ugly is a celebration of the messy creative process and a call to face the obstacles of that process with mindfulness and humanity. This is a book for anyone who has ever wished they were “more creative.” It’s a plea to stop looking for the muses and inspiration before you do your best work. Equal parts needed encouragement to dream big and practical advice for getting your hands dirty, Start Ugly is a soulful, at times irreverent, reminder that creativity is more the stuff of hard work and courage than it is the stuff of magic. And if there is magic at all to be found, it’s in starting.
“If I could give this more than a 5-star rating, I would. Excellent doesn’t even define this book. So much of his writings resonated with me and with many other people I’ve previously spoken with about these same issues, just grappling with answers, pulling at air straws. I just happened to stumble across this book on Amazon and am so glad I did. It was very difficult to put this book down. I wanted to keep reading it until I was done. I was flying through the pages, just eating everything up.”—G.G., Amazon review
Find more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
The Problem with Muses, 2020
Notes on Everyday Creativity
The creative life used to be the domain of the muses, those astonishing Greek Goddesses responsible for inspiration and creativity. If they showed up, our work in these areas would go well, ideas would flow, and creativity would abound. Lucky us. But what if they didn’t?
The problem with muses (one of 28 essays on the creative life from which this book gets its name) is that we could wait forever for them to appear, and most of us have work to do. This is only one of the challenges facing anyone longing for a life of everyday creativity. The Problem with Muses is a collection of transcripts from my podcast series, A Beautiful Anarchy, pulled together for the first time for those who prefer the written word.
From Amazon: “Candid, wise, deeply human, and speaking from a lifetime (so far) of wrestling with the muses and a creative life that has taken him from professional comedian to humanitarian photographer to best-selling author and podcaster, duChemin speaks to the prevailing, and all-too-common challenges of the creative life, including doubts and fears, imposter’s syndrome, the pursuit of authenticity, the inevitability of distractions, the urge to compare ourselves with others, feelings of directionlessness, the desire for relevance, and more. If you struggle with the creative life as much as you love it, you are not alone.”
For more details, read reviews, and purchase on Amazon here.
Amazon links are provided here, but most of the these titles are available through other online bookstores and can be ordered through any brick and mortar store. Your use of these links puts an extra dollar in my pocket (thank you) and won’t cost you anything more.
Other titles like VisionMongers, Vision & Voice, and The Print & The Process, are now out of print.
Comments
David – I have just sent you an email requesting to advise a source to purchase your book “The Visual Imagination” as I am unable to find it anywhere.
Thank you
Satish
MO 22 SEP 2025
Good Afternoon David.
I became aware of your work having read an entry in a message thread of an acquaintance last Thursday. Since that time, I have also discovered your podcast series, A Beautiful Anarchy. To date, I have listened to ten episodes and numerous YouTube interviews as well.
What originally grabbed my attention was a phrase attributed to you, and used in that first message thread. “Stronger Photographs”.
“Stronger Photographs” I thought. Hadn’t considered stronger, only better. And after a moment, I wondered whatever did “better” mean. There’re no qualifications attached to better. Nothing concrete one may apply to that. However, there’s something inside my head that intrinsically understood that it is a worthy yet unachievable target. It’s a “low-bar setter” term that allows one to go along working and creating images without having to really do anything different as better is so subjective a term.
I’ve been struggling lately to understand what has been making me so … disenchanted with my own work of late, until I read that term. As soon as I read it, I was nailed by it. T H A T term “stronger photographs” – perhaps not as distinctly – was precisely what I did not know was crawling around in my brain until at last it made its way in through that message thread via the same eyes that I use to create the images that are now causing me so much artistic angst.
I still actually love my work. I really do. And equally, the progress that I’ve made over the past twenty-five years I’ve been shooting digitally and editing that work via PS & LR. However, during the review of a website that I have paid upfront for the creation thereof, has my work come back at me causing me to question just why the hell am I spending so much of my time/life practicing this expensive and time-consuming effort.
I received a link to my work-in-progress from the site-builder and eagerly clicked. As it opened to my anticipatory gaze and I clicked through the first five or six images I was crushed.
“This is what I have spent all this effort doing? Really” I thought.
Later that evening, on the heels of that smack-in-the-head moment of seeing my images online was when I read through the message thread I mentioned above, and saw the term “Stronger Photographs”.
“Stronger”, I thought. I like that, then; How do I do that? Where may I begin? What exactly does that even mean?
I decided to “Google” your name and that is where I cam up with your YT videos & podcast content. A little later in the week I also discovered your earlier work online entitled “Vision is Better” and listened to about six or seven of those episodes.
Based alone upon what content of yours I’ve to date consumed, and having heard you reference a few of the books you’ve written, I e-travelled to Amazon and looked those up. I spent around two hours reading the previews of about three of them and then did a search (it didn’t take much time or effort) and found ten of them. I placed each one of them in my cart after reading each respective preview. Following that I looked through their “used list” for each title. I found three that were listed as “Excellent” or “Like New” and were as well ½ price. I then decided to just go ahead and do the check-out routine.
That’s when that pesky “Join Amazon Prime” for free for 30 days and get Free Shipping appeared. I saw that I could save another $20 bucks so I joined knowing I may cancel before I actually get charged.
I purchased all ten books all at once, and joined Amazon Prime Free for 30 days simply to take advantage of the fact that the delivery of those ten volumes will arrive at my stoop tomorrow, TU 23 SEP 2025 by no later than 2100 hours. FREE DELIVERY.
1) Light, Space & Time 2) The Visual Toolbox 3) Within the Frame 4) The Soul of the Camera 5) The Heart of the Photograph 6) Start Ugly 7) A Beautiful Anarchy 8) The problem With Muses 9) Photographically Speaking 10) Vision & Voice
You may be curious David, why would a person do this? Well, based upon advice directly from you in at least three of the podcast/YouTube videos and interviews, I’ve watched and or listened to over the past five or so days, you’ve mentioned to get into the habit of reaching out to other artists/photographers. This is sort of exactly that I guess.
In addition to that, I also placed my name on your list to be notified when your IMAGEWORK class reopens for registration.
My reason for all this is the fact that your term “Make Stronger Images” ignited a desire to actually make stronger images, having believed that I already DID make strong images. And while that is true, and I firmly believe that I do, I am ready to up the ante so to speak, and step into even stronger image-making. With a bit of good fortune, your content in all its forms, will assist me in that pursuit.
I turned 75 on the day Charlie Kirk was murdered. Tomorrow, 23 SEP 2025 at 0900 hours I receive my last radiation treatment for prostate cancer (prognosis looks good). Later this week my website is entering its second-to-last edit phase. I’m editing an additional ten images to be included there. This coming Friday, Home Depot is delivering all the materials to my driveway that will become, before the end of November, a 16’x16’ deck and pergola, built from the ground up by me. I have a lot on my plate and much to accomplish. My photography is, apart from all this other activity, the single most important work of all. Having listened to your online information, and having seen some of your actual work, I feel as though I can trust what you have to advise on the craft of photography, its pursuit and development, and the rigors one must apply to do the best work.
Knowing you only through your presence online, and your no-bullshit approach, I have respect for what you say and appreciate your style of delivery. I intend to try to learn, through your books and online content what you have to offer and apply it to my photographic journey to the making of Stronger Photographs.
Thank You.
Respectfully,
Jay Sigal
Wow, thank you for that, Jay. I’ll drop you a line privately by way of a proper reply.