Learn to ask better, more helpful questions of your work so that you can create stronger and more powerful photographs.

Photographers often look at an image—one they’ve either already created or are in the process of making—and ask themselves a simple question: “Is this a good photograph?” It’s an understandable question, but it’s really not very helpful. How are you supposed to answer that? What does “good” even mean? Is it the same for everyone?

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? In The Heart of the Photograph: 100 Questions for Making Stronger, More Expressive Photographs, photographer and author David duChemin 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.

From the big-picture questions—What do I want this image to accomplish?—to the more detail-oriented questions that help you get there—What is the light doing? Where do the lines lead? What can I do about it?—David walks you through his thought process so that you can establish your own. Along the way, he discusses the building blocks from which compelling photographs are made, such as gesture, balance, scale, contrast, perspective, story, memory, symbolism, and much more. The Heart of the Photograph is not a theoretical book. It is a practical and useful book that equips you to think more intentionally as a photographer and empowers you to ask more helpful questions of you and your work, so that you can produce images that are not only better than “good,” but as powerful and authentic as you hope them to be.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Better Questions

PART ONE: A GOOD PHOTOGRAPH?
Is It Good?
The Audience's Good
The Photographer's Good

PART TWO: BETTER THAN GOOD
Better Subjects

PART THREE: BETTER EXPRESSION
Exploration and Expression
What Is the Light Doing?
What Does Colour Contribute?
What Role Do the Lines and Shapes Play?
What's Your Point of View?
What Is the Quality of the Moment?
Where Is the Story?
Where Is the Contrast?
What About Balance and Tension?
What Is the Energy?
How Can I Use Space and Scale?
Can I Go Deeper?
What About the Frame?
Do the Elements Repeat?
Harmony
Can I Exclude More?
Where Does the Eye Go?
How Does It Feel?
Where's the Mystery?
Remember When?
Can I Use Symbols?
Am I Being Too Literal?

PART FOUR: BETTER PHOTOGRAPHS
The Heart of the Photograph
Index

Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr takes a photographic tour through his life.

We all have moments we wish we could relive. We’d give anything to skid down the toboggan hills of our youth, to breathe in the smell of our children as babies or to spend just one more minute with a loved one we’ve lost. Dear Photograph provides a way to link these memories from the past to the present. The idea is simple: hold a photograph from the past up in front of the place where it was originally taken; take a second photograph; add a sentence of dedication about what the photograph means to you. The results, however, are astounding, which is why millions have flocked to the site, and thousands have submitted their own Dear Photographs. This stunning visual compilation includes more than 140 never-before-seen Dear Photographs. By turns nostalgic, charming and poignant, Dear Photograph evokes childhood memories, laments difficult losses and, above all, celebrates the universal nature of love.

Learn to take great photos with your iPhone—the camera you always have with you!

Imagine if someone took the same photographic techniques, principles, and tools used by high-end and professional photographers, but applied them to shooting with an iPhone. Imagine the type of images you’d be able to create using those same ideas. Well, finally, somebody has.

The world’s #1 best-selling photography techniques author is about to break all the rules as he shows you how to apply the same techniques today’s top pro photographers use to make stunning images. You’re going to learn exactly how to use these techniques to create images that people will just not believe you could actually take with a phone (but with the quality of the iPhone’s camera, you absolutely can!).

Scott leaves all the techno-speak behind and, instead, treats the whole book as if it were just you and he out on a shoot with your iPhones, using his trademark casual, plain-English writing style to help you unlock the power of your iPhone to make the type of pictures you never thought could be done with a phone. You’ll learn:

• Which tools to use to make pro-quality portraits in any lighting situation.

• How to create stunning landscape shots that people will swear you took with an expensive DSLR or mirrorless camera.

• Proven posing techniques that flatter your subject and make anyone you photograph look their very best in every shot.

• How to organize and edit your photos like a pro!

• The pros’ top tips for making amazing shots of everything from flowers to product shots, from food photography to travel shots, and everything in between.

Each page covers a single concept, a single tool, or a trick to take your iPhone photography from snapshots to shots that will make your friends and family say, “Wait…you took this?!”

Through the story of Tamara, an abused Native American child, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan describes the plight of many children living on reservations—and offers hope for the future. On a winter morning in 1990, U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota picked up the Bismarck Tribune. On the front page, a small Native American girl gazed into the distance, shedding a tear. The headline: "Foster home children beaten—and nobody's helping." Dorgan, who had been working with American Indian tribes to secure resources, was upset. He flew to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to meet with five-year-old Tamara who had suffered a horrible beating at a foster home. He visited with Tamara and her grandfather and they became friends. Then Tamara disappeared. And he would search for her for decades until they finally found each other again. This book is her story, from childhood to the present, but it's also the story of a people and a nation. More than one in three American Indian/Alaskan Native children live in poverty. AI/AN children are disproportionately in foster care and awaiting adoption. Suicide among AI/AN youth ages 15 to 24 is 2.5 times the national rate. How has America allowed this to happen? As distressing a situation as it is, this is also a story of hope and resilience. Dorgan, who founded the Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) at the Aspen Institute, has worked tirelessly to bring Native youth voices to the forefront of policy discussions, engage Native youth in leadership and advocacy, and secure and share resources for Native youth. You will fall in love with this heartbreaking story, but end the book knowing what can be done and what you can do.

Organized by ICP Curator Carol Squiers, 'What Is a Photograph?' will explore the intense creative experimentation in photography that has occurred since the 1970s. Conceptual art introduced photography into contemporary art making, using the medium in ways that challenged it artistically, intellectually, and technically and broadened the notion of what a photograph could be in art. A new generation of artists began an equally rigorous but more aesthetically adventurous analysis, which probed photography itself - from the role of light, color, composition, to materiality and the subject. 'What Is a Photograph?' brings together these artists, who reinvented photography.

Furnishes an overview of digital photography, covering such topics as cameras, exposure, lighting, shutter speed, depth of field, and resolution--and tips on how to avoid hours of photo-editing by taking great photographs the first time.