Picture This: How Pictures Work

Contributed by Ken Tanaka

As a lifelong devotee of color I bought The Secret Lives of Color in early 2018. It’s a wonderful little work that strongly reminds me of a class I took as a very young weekend student at the Art Institute of Chicago many decades ago. Becoming more aware of color’s influence in your daily visual life, beyond cameras, is such a fundamental step in visual literacy. I recommend this book for any TOP readers. But I strongly recommend giving a copy of this book to a young person—perhaps your children or grandchildren—as a special gift. I took the class I referenced, above, when I was 10 or 11 and I dare say it certainly altered my life’s visual trajectory. Kassia St. Clair’s book holds that same potential for a young person.

There are several other wonderful little books I could recommend for sharpening color and visual skills but one gem shines brightest in my library. Molly Bang’s Picture This: How Pictures Work is a tiny powerhouse that may help relax a tedious grip on all those silly "composition" rules chanted by photography buffs. Bang, an author and illustrator of children’s books, teaches 2D communication essentially through a series of figure-ground relationship lessons. Her book is aimed at a generally young audience of budding future artists and illustrators but it’s a perfect lesson plan for amateur photographers who may not have benefited from any formal aesthetic education. Don’t be put off by its elementary tone; give it your attention and work through it with your camera. It will probably reward you.

Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color and Molly Bang’s Picture This: How Pictures Work are perfect reads for photo fans to start a still-locked-down 2021 productively!

Ken Tanaka

ADDENDUM from Ken: I obliquely recommended using Picture This as a kind of lesson plan with your camera. And I still do. But if you’re not currently disposed to using your camera you can still use the book’s lessons. Use a top-quality news site such as the New York Times that features the best daily collections of edited and curated images. (I don’t recommend wasting time with social media photo sites such as Flickr or IG; too much chaff and zero curation.) Line up two or three images that you find compelling and analyze them against Picture This lessons. After a few sessions of this I think you’ll recognize how the bones of a "good" image are constructed.

More important, I think you’ll also quickly recognize that figure-ground relationships are only the foundations of a good photograph. Gesture, color/tonality, inflection, emotional precedence, etc., etc., are the successive layers that really distinguish good camera work. And not just humanistic work. Top-quality inanimate work such as landscapes and architecture nearly always incorporates these properties, too.

Good, constructive, SAFE learning activities for a cold pandemic winter!

Original contents copyright 2020 by Kenneth Tanaka. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rick Popham: "Thom Hogan recommended Picture This a few years ago. Time for me to revisit it. I wonder if there will be a run on the remaining stock of Secret Lives as there was with Molly Bang’s book. As I recall, they decided to print another run of Picture This."

Andrew Molitor: "Excellent book. I used it as the inspiration for the theme of the photos I take to illustrate my wife's blog posts. She's a financial planner (to a specific niche which you probably are not part of, so I feel comfortable that this isn't a plug) which you can see here. She gets a surprising amount of positive feedback on these fairly weird pictures."

Comments

[Franz Amador]

The second "Picture This" link takes me to "40 Photographers".

[Should be fixed now, and thank you, Franz. --Mike]

[Josh]

Thanks, Ken. As Secret Lives is apparently a satisfyingly tactile book as well (according to various reviews), do you recommend the hardback in particular, or is the paperback just as good?

[Kenneth Tanaka]

@Josh: I actually do recommend the physical book of “Secret Lives...” . The format, the press, and the typography are carefully designed to work together to deliver the concepts. But i actually ended up with the book and Kindle versions, as I discovered the book while I was traveling.

[Rob de Loe]

Picture This is deceptively simplistic the first time you read it. But put it down for a while and then come back to it. The simplicity of the text and images is a first impression only; there's great depth and insight here.

Ken inspired me to pick up my copy and read it again tonight. I notice something different each time. This time it triggered a memory of a picture from last winter. I just need to add a tiny red triangle to this one to make it look like I was using Molly's picture on page 23 as inspiration.

https://i.ibb.co/jGvZLjy/Page23.jpg

[richardl]

on IG I seem to be able to find, follow, interact with editors, book sellers, publishers, gallerists in addition to some established photographers... even more than if going through the newpapers. True, no one edits my stream for me.

but thanks for the advisary