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Written by German photographic arts teacher Harald Mante, The Photograph: Composition and Color Design is an in-depth and descriptive guide on to how to look at and compose a photograph, and the individual elements that go together to make an image more visually appealing or effective. Going beyond the technical aspects of photography it discusses individual principles of line, shape and colour, contrast, composition and design using illustrative examples from the author's own portfolio.
The book is A4 hardback, has 192 pages and includes the following chapters:
Chapter 1 -The Point
Chapter 2 - The Line
Chapter 3 - The Shape
Chapter 4 - Universal Contrasts
Chapter 5 - Color Contrasts
Chapter 6 - Using The Tools
The Photograph is a well written and laid-out book with high quality inspirational images used as examples throughout but at £30.99 it's also quite pricey. While it's not a book you would want to sit and read the whole way through, the book is a useful guide just to dip into and maybe learn a thing or two about a specific area of interest.
Possibly too specific in subject for beginners, The Photograph would be better suited to those with some knowledge of photography and those just starting out in the subject might want to give this a miss. Fans of Harald Mante's work might appreciate the book simply for the images alone.