Image Makers, Image Takers

Book excerpt: This essential guide draws on in-depth interviews with established photographers from the fields of fashion, art, portraiture, documentary photography, and advertising as well as comments from picture editors, curators, agency directors, and publishers who reveal what they look for when choosing an image. The book first focuses on photographers’ working practices. What made the photographer start taking pictures? How did he or she develop a signature style? What is the process involved in going from concept to shoot? How important is postproduction? Then the book turns to selection. How does a picture editor decide which photographer to commission for the next fashion spread? What kind of photograph is worthy of being hung in a gallery? What advice would an art book publisher give a budding photographer? Whether it is the question of what to look for in an image, views on cropping, or the pros and cons of color versus black and white, the shapers of taste give acute and useful accounts of their methods. This updated edition includes five new interviews: Pascal Dangin, who pioneered a revolutionary digital scanning technique; Fabrice Dall’Anese, a celebrated French portrait photographer for Vanity Fair, GQ, Elle, and others; Jörg Colberg, creator of the photography blog, Conscientious; Jehad Nga, a self-taught photographer whose focus has recently shifted from photojournalism to fine art photography; and Tim Barber, who launched tinyvices.com in 2005, an online gallery and image archive.