Ian Furniss Photography » Blog Archive » VENICE, A Monograph The Print & Process (by David duChemin)

VENICE, A Monograph The Print & Process (by David duChemin)

Regular visitors to this site will already be familiar with the name David duChemin and the inspirational work he does with both the lens and the pen. Anyone else, where have you been hiding and is your name Osama!?!? You see, apart from being a great inspiration and thoroughly nice chap, David duChemin, when he’s not out working on assignment, running photo workshops, posting on his blog, and doing countless other things that would wear out a professional athlete, has somehow managed to find time to squeeze in two of the hottest best-sellers at your local Waterstones and some highly in-demand E-books to go with them. ‘Prolific’ doesn’t quite cover it!

His latest E-book ‘Venice’ is released today and like the rest of his work, it’s inspirational. It’s the photographic recording & telling of a personal project which David sets out as being “to shoot the city as I experienced it: through the lens of my solitary presence there, in my loneliness.”. As challenges go, shooting solitude as a theme in Venice is up there with going to Belgrade and not shooting a beautiful woman, or going to Paris and not coming back with a shot of the Eiffel Tower. “Yeah right! Good luck with that!” is the first thought in my head.

Thankfully i’m not a gambling man or i’d currently be destitute and living without a shirt on my back because not only does David succeed, he does so whilst capturing some of the most beautiful and dare I say ‘iconic’ images i’ve seen for quite some time. Some of the shots here are really special. Moments captured in such a way that you can sit and stare at them for hours, reading over and over again, the story within the frame and your own outside. Maybe it’s me being a traditionalist but i’d like to one day see this book as a (tea)coffee-table book rather than in .pdf format, simply because images that are this good deserve to be touched by more than your eyes and heart.

As I mentioned at the begining, David is a master of both the pen and the lens and I imagine he has a great love for both because he’s wisely laid things out so that the one doesn’t detract from the other and I like that I can just sit and look at the images without feeling the pull of the text taking me away. In this E-book though, the old addage is true and the images really are only a part of the story. The other part comes as David walks you through his personal thoughts and ideas of the whole creative process involved in making this book. He begins by describing the thoughts and reasons behind the ‘why’ of creating it, and then he takes you along on the journey of ‘how’. For someone such as myself it’s an approach I relate to and appreciate greatly. It’s the essence of inspired teaching and learning that far too few books manage to encapsulate. If I ask you “How did you create that image?” I don’t want to hear f5.6 @ 1/250sec, I want to hear what was inside you! Your thoughts! Your emotions! Don’t tell me what you did, tell me how you felt! Not one for inattention to detail, David actually tells you about both so you can either geek out on the details as well, or get more in depth with the thoughts and emotions if you want.

All in all it’s another classic from both David and Craft & Vision which you can read through, or look through, time and time again. Insight this good is hard to come by and it can usually only be found through attending workshops or seminars that give you the chance to speak one on one with the author. David writes in such a way that often you feel you are and so as such, like The Magic of Black & White (Andrew S Gibson) before it, I have no hesitation in recommending this as something every photographer should have in their creative armoury. Once again there are two links here, an affiliate link and a non-affiliate link and you can use either to get to the site. With the affiliate link, any purchases make a contribution to this site, with the non-affiliate link the price is the same, the codes are the same, but all monies go directly to Craft & Vision. This is something i’ve done purely for myself and my own integrity as it gives you a choice without obligation. I’ll only ever suggest “buy this” if I feel something is worth it, not because i’ll earn from it.

For the first three days only, if you use the promotional code VENICE4 when you checkout, you can have VENICE, A Monograph for only $4 OR use the code VENICE20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more books from the Craft & Vision collection. (These codes expire at 11:59pm PST JUNE 12, 2010.)

VENICE, A Monograph *Affiliated Link

VENICE, A Monograph*Non-Affiliated Link

Here’s a quick overview:
VENICE, A Monograph is the first in The Print & Process series, a series created to give the photograph a place to stand on its own within a small body of work (The Print) followed by a discussion of the creation of those images (The Process). It’s a more intimate look into the process of creation and another attempt by our Craft & Vision team to create books that pair inspiration with solid photographic teaching. VENICE, A Monograph is a collection of over 30 photographs created along themes of loneliness and solitude over a 5-day period in Venice in May 2010, and followed by a discussion of the Why and the How behind the images. 47pages long, and in PDF format, this first installment of The Print & The Process series is laid out in landscape format to make viewing equally good on the iPad as well as desktop and laptop computers.