“Focus: Found Faces [Book Review]” plus 1 more: Digital Photography School

Posted: 12 Jun 2011 12:37 PM PDT

Next to pop-up books I like cut-out books… you know, the ones that have little holes cut into their covers and end pages. Oh and I don't mind if the price is attractive as well.
Like this one!
This compact book is 19cm square; too large for the back pocket but just right for a backpack. It's short on words but big on pictures, 245 of 'em, some full page, others two to a page.
Ninety photographers from 26 countries contributed to the book.
The premise is to encourage you to venture out in the big city or the great outdoors with 'hungry eyes', searching for picture opportunities "hunting snapshots of beauty, intrigue, or surprise amid the ordinary fodder of the everyday?"
Focus - Found Faces 2.jpg

Faces can appear in the most unexpected places: warehouse windows stare back at us with a grin; electrical outlets glare with a robotic expression; a road grader on a low loader has a determined expression, the visage composed of its tyres and cabin windows;
The book points out that humans are hard-wired to recognise patterns in everything: one of the reasons soldiers wear makeup is to break up the lines of their faces.
The faces are overwhelmingly derived from found objects: a blast furnace, garage door, bathroom basin, etc. Apart from shots of rock falls, a leaf, a tenement wall, very few are taken directly from nature, like cloudy skies etc. An opportunity for you?
Focus - Found Faces 3.jpg

One of my favourite pictures is that taken by Mattia Mionetto of a near-empty beer glass as the photographer recognised the face of Jack Skellington (1993 movie Nightmare Before Xmas) emerging from the foam of his beer. You can find faces everywhere!
The book is good fun and a wonderful jolter to encourage some imaginative image capture.
Senior Editor: N McConville.
Publisher: Lark Books.
Length: 180 pages.
ISBN: 978 1 60059 792 3.
Price: Get a price on Focus: Found Faces: Your World, Your Images at Amazon where it is currently 31% off.
Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

Focus: Found Faces [Book Review]

Are you New to dPS? Take the 5 Minute dPS Tour Here

Posted: 12 Jun 2011 07:13 AM PDT

Are you new to Digital Photography School?
It struck me last night that over the past few months we’ve seen a lot of growth in terms of new readers here on dPS and perhaps it was time I gave those of you who are new a quick tour.

Image by David Goehring

So if you’re new – assemble over here, please keep together and if you get lost – just look for me, I’ll be the guy holding the big dPS sign up!
On that note – my name is Darren Rowse and I started dPS back in 2006. I’m a full time blogger and keen photographer. You can read a little more about me here.

The main Areas of dPS

Over the years dPS has grown in a number of ways. We started off as a simple blog in 2006 but things have evolved a little since then. So lets take a look at three of the main areas of the site:

dPS the Blogs – dPS has three main blogs dedicated to different topics. They are ‘photography tips‘ (where we put our main tutorials on how to take better photos), Cameras and Equipment (where there are reviews of gear and more gear related tips) and Post Production. We the blog areas regularly – most of it happen in the ‘tips’ section but we’re also adding content regularly in the others too.
dPS the Community Forum – the dPS Community forum is one of the most active parts of the site – we have over 167,000 members there doing everything from participating in assignments, to critiquing each others shots, to sharing what they know about photography technique and much more. The forums are all completely free and are moderated by a wonderful team of dedicated members.
dPS Resources – over the last couple of years we’ve developed a growing range of photography resources to help our readers explore different aspect of their photography. At present we have six eBooks available for purchase – ranging in topics from understanding your camera, to taking great travel photography, to learning about portrait photography and even self portraiture. While these eBooks are only available for purchase they do keep the rest of what we do completely free.

How to get the most out of dPS

There are a variety of ways that you can connect to dPS depending on your interest and how you use the web.

Newsletter – the most popular way to connect and get weekly updates of new content on the site is through our weekly email newsletter. It is free and comes out on Thursdays/Fridays (depending on which part of the world you live) and is packed with our new tips and tutorials. You can subscribe to it here on this page. Last time I checked our newsletter was subscribed to by over 450,000 people.
RSS Feeds – if you’re a user of RSS we have a variety of feeds you might like to add to your feed reader. There’s our main blog feed (which will give you everything from the 3 blogs). Or if you just want information from one of our blog areas there are also feeds for our tips blog, our camera and equipment blog and our post production blog.
Facebook – one of the fastest growing areas of dPS has been in our social media communities. Facebook has been the most popular of these – you can connect with us there by hitting the ‘like’ button on our Facebook page. It’ll give you updates on new posts on the blog but we also do a lot of discussion there too.
Twitter – we do similar updates on our Twitter Account – follow us at @digitalPS

How to Make dPS Better for Everyone

For those of you who feel as though you’d like to contribute to dPS – we’re always looking for those with tips or tutorials to share with our community. Much of what is on the site is provided by our readers and in return we love to send them traffic (the site is read by 3-4 million readers a month). You can find out how to contribute as a writer here.
We also value any way that you can pass on dPS to others. Whether it be inviting your friends in person or on social media, linking to us from your own blog, or telling your local media about us – we value your involvement in helping the site grow.