Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography
by Brenda Tharp

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Book Reviews of Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography

Book Review: Can Creativity be Taught?
Summary: 5 Stars

Tharp begins and ends the book by telling you that the secret to creativity is learning to see. But as you go through the book some of the chapters on subjects like light and composition and perspective sound remarkably similar to a lot of other photography books that are concerned with technique rather than creativity. Tharp's method is to give you a rule like "simplify" and then to tell you how to simplify. She does this well and the pictures that she uses certainly show her creativity, but it's hard to make the connection between these rules and developing our creativity.

I wish she had spent more time on telling us how to see because I think she is on the right trail here. But if you speed down the highway too quickly you might miss it, which would be a shame. Assuming you can teach creativity, Tharp makes a decent try of it, providing the reader is willing to work at making the connections to seeing.

There are many approaches to teaching how to be photographically creative. In "Fine Art Nature Photography: Advanced Techniques and the Creative Process" Tony Sweet presents us with a series of pictures and a narrative for each that explains what he was trying to achieve with the photograph and what techniques he used to achieve it. In "Creative Landscape Photography", Niall Benvie talks about the different subject matter one may encounter, like wilderness, and then talks about what that subject means to him and what techniques he uses to translate what he sees and feels into a photograph. And my favorite photography book, "Photography and the Art of Seeing" by Freeman Paterson, in a very touchy-feely work, provides a number of unusual exercises that are designed to teach a photographer how to see.

None of these books actually teaches creativity (although for me, Paterson comes closest.) Instead they show creative work and the considerations that the authors had in creating that work. Whether any method works in developing creativity is an open question. If it can be developed, which authors' approach will work best will depend on the individual reader. A serious photographer will want to try them all until he or she finds one that works for him or her. Tharp's book is certainly one that ought to be examined in this difficult search.

Summary of Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography

How-to Books

• Subjects > Arts & Photography > Photography > How-to
• Nature & Wildlife
• Reference