Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig
What an interesting book!
A little about me, I’m a long time professional videographer and hobbyist photographer. Recently (4months ago) I began offering photography as part of my freelance services. I understand my DSLR and am gaining experience.
So, that’s me as a photographer, what did I feel about this book?
The bulk of the content is random short SHORT essays. It seems that Chris Orwig is a great teacher and has written down some of his better philosophical speeches/pitches. Collected all those notes organized them into a few categories, slapped a name on those categories and called them chapters. There isn’t a lot of continuity stringing one essay to the next. In fact, if the traditional chapter structure was yanked out of the book it would work just the same.
An overwhelming pro of this style of writing is you can just pick it up and go! Comparable to the Art of War, or the book of Psalms. Lots of great short sections of knowledge. I was reading this book and listening to the audio book for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People at the same time. If you are familiar with this book, you will find it actually has a lot of things in common and Visual Poetry could be the 7-habbits version FOR photographers.
The book teaches you how to approach photography in a meaningful, philosophical, poetic way. NOT a technical way. If you are looking for details in the technical aspect, skip this book.
Making up for the absences of technical instruction is the ‘Workshop Assignments.’ These are a REAL gem. Mimicking a classroom structure Orwig gives you an assignment with multiple levels to complete. In this section is also a hefty amount of resources (with short descriptions) and sharing instructions (well, suggestions if you DON’T approach this as a classroom setup).
I have probably half a dozen post-it notes sticking out of this book, marking sections to revisit. Nearly all of them are the Workshop Assignments that I plan to fulfill. I believe these are the tools that will actually improve your product. The rest of the book improves your approach.
Chris Orwig interviews a couple professional photographers at the conclusion of the chapters, titled ‘guest speakers.’ He highlight’s their accomplishments and skill sets, then proceeds to ask them questions that I’m sure we ALL would love to ask.
Who is this book for?
1. The person that is JUST starting out and understand the basic technical side of their camera.
2. The pro photographer that is in a bit of a rut and could use some inspiration.
If you are one of the two people above, I’d rate Visual Poetry 4 out of 5 stars! The only reason a star is missing is because of the lack of technical instruction, not just actual photography but the ‘business section’ could have had the chapter renamed to something like ‘thoughts on business’ because there was VERY little content there. Overall great job Chris and thank you for the insight!