By Julieanne Kost
February 2006
Pages: 152
ISBN 10: 0-596-10083-3 |
ISBN 13: 9780596100834
(Average of 4 Customer Reviews)
Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking is a complete view of a creative project from the artist's perspective. Julieanne Kost, a Photoshop and creative thinking guru, has taken her own experience shooting images out of airplane windows to create a unique seminar in three parts: a manifesto of ways to stay creatively alive; a portfolio of stunning photographs, with commentaries describing her experiences and thought process; and a technical appendix that includes the details of the images were shot, manipulated, and prepared for printing.
Full Description
The first section of the book, The Art of Creative Thinking: The Principles, outlines Julieanne's method for staying creative in an increasingly complicated world. In her personal stories, advice, and philosophies, you'll find inspiration if you're stuck or just can't get started. You may recognize some of your own less-than-productive thought processes as she describes her own struggle to let go of the everyday flotsam of life to find a quiet mental space in which she can think, dream, and create.
The second part of the book, Window Seat: The Portfolio, is a collection of images culled from over 3000 photographs Julieanne shot from commercial airplane windows over a period of five years. The photographs are accompanied by brief commentaries addressing various aspects of the process, from the original inspiration to issues of control, subject matter, image selection, and manipulation.
The Appendix contains technical information: a discussion of the equipment and media Julieanne used to shoot the photos; how she processed the photographs using Adobe Camera Raw; the Photoshop techniques she employed to correct, retouch, and manipulate the images; her personal file management system; and how she prepares her files for printing.
This book is essential reading for photographers and artists looking for ways to stay creatively awake, aware, and alive.
Cover | Table of Contents | Sample Excerpt
Featured customer reviews
Awesome Book, February 26 2008
Several years ago, I attended a photography seminar and heard Julieanne speak. I was impressed with her knowledge of Photoshop and her easy to understand explanation of various techniques. At that time, she mentioned she had just published a book and portfolio of photos of various views from airplane windows. The idea of this type of book intrigued me.
The book is fun to read and inspired me to take photos from my window seat on my last vacation. Mine didn’t turn out as good as hers but I will keep working on it.
The best part of the book is the last part of the book. She explains in detail many of her techniques on how she captured the pictures and then enhanced them in Photoshop. She also tells how she organizes her collection on the computer so that specific pictures can be retrieved at a later date.
The Art of Creative Thinking, August 09 2007
Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking by Julieanne Kost
Reviewed by Kathy Pryer, member of Eureka Photoshop Users Group, an official Adobe user group
The first section is entitled; The Art of Creative Thinking, which is descriptive of its contents, occupies the first 20 pages. The results, consisting of photographs taken out of window seats in commercial airliners, occupy the next 90 pages. On pages 23, 41, 57, 69, 81, 99, and 109 there is text that takes the reader through the mental steps she had to follow in her creative process. The appendix, occupying the final 25 pages, sets forth the steps used in Adobe Photoshop manipulating the raw images. The book is well arranged.
Digital photographs were taken with a Nikon D100 using a 35-70mm lens with the ISO set at 200, the white balance either Auto or Cloudy, and using RAW format. All of the digital images were processed using Adobe Camera RAW in either Photoshop CS or CS2.
THE ART OF CREATIVE THINKING
This section is divided into 18 suggested steps. In addition to mastering the tools, Julieanne Kost delves into what life is trying to tell her and being open to whatever comes her way. As we do in our user group, sharing and collaborating teach us to be flexible and learn to negotiate. Art and daily routine do not mix and she suggests how to separate the two. Kost's airline flights were a part of her job at Adobe. That company is not connected directly with the subject matter of this book. It all began after numerous boring flights led her to conceive of shooting pictures out the window of the earth below as an immense constantly scrolling image; becoming a spectator of the scene rather than a part of it. This shows clearly in the many pages of photographs of the surface and clouds, which have little text.
On pages 81 and 99 she talks about her feelings and ideas as she reviewed the 100s of images laid out on her dining room table in 4x6 inch prints. These brought out strong emotion and love of our planet, which made it difficult to reduce the number down to a manageable level. She had no preconceived ideas on how much to manipulate each of the chosen photographs. The RAW images were often not the same as Julieanne remembered and she tried to recapture the emotion the scene had generated when she took the picture. Each of us would tend to have different categories of scenes we want to photograph and manipulate. Her main focus was clouds, mountains and unusual land formations.
IMAGING TECHNIQUES
For most of our membership the appendix might be the most valuable portion of the book. She began her project with a film camera but soon switched to digital using the Nikon D100. Kost writes of the difficulties shooting through the airplane window giving several solutions. I found the before and after images especially interesting, since she gives techniques used.
Lovely To Look At, June 27 2007
Window Seat (The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking) by Julieanne Kost
Reviewed by Diane Williams, member of the Eureka Photoshop Users Group, 6/20/07
Window Seat is 90% coffee table photo book and 10% self-help and imaging techniques work flow book.
This 147 page book is a beautiful visual memory of those sights you see when you gaze out the window of a plane. I know I have tried to capture what I see out the window of a plane and have been very disappointed by the images. I may be able to make something of them now with this work flow.
Kost shows us sample original images captured by her and we see the final image after she has applied image corrections in Photoshop. Her instructions are brief. This is not a step-by-step tutorial giving all the input numbers. It is a general overview of the work flow what may be necessary, how you get there by pointing to the tools, and what they can do for you.
The self-help part of the book lists Julieanne's 18 self help and creative thinking hints. Here they are:
- Master your tools.
- Listen to what your life is trying to tell you.
- Be open to whatever comes your way.
- Share what you know and learn from others.
- Collaborate with other creative people, especially the quiet ones.
- Be flexible. Learn to negotiate.
- Fix whatever you complain about most.
- View every challenge as a possible discovery.
- Take 15 minutes for yourself everyday.
- Figure out what you need to do to reach your zero point.
- Integrate work and Art; both will benefit.
- Take up an interest in something you know nothing about.
- Look at new stuff- and what you already know- with fresh perspective.
- Keep a journal.
- Visualize first, Photoshop second.
- Replace your thoughts with intuition
- Play! Play! Play!
- Know when you're done.
This book is worth a look even if it is just to vicariously have the window seat. It will not teach anyone much about Photoshop.
A Great Lesson in Seeing, August 15 2006
As a digital photographer myself, I found Julieanne's book quite remarkable as a unique project born from a fresh look at the beauty around us that we often take for granted during the normal humdrum of our lives. Seeing something unique within our common surroundings and applying some simple tools results in both art and a realized vision. She provides the reader valuable information about her visualization process and actual image process. This work is one that I will visit from time to time...both for relaxation and new ideas. She gets the creative juices flowing. Highly recommended.
Media reviews
"...one of the more profound Photoshop and photography related books I've seen in many years, yet has the least amount of technical content...While she has educated many thousands of photographers on Adobe's flagship software through various Photoshop conferences, workshops, and a DVD series from Software Cinema), the real meat of her book is a plainspoken treatise on how to stay fresh and creative, even in the face of your fears or while mired in the prosaic grind of the workaday world."
-- Ellis Vener, Professional Photographer
"[This book] will stand out among photography books for the sheer brilliance of the photography within its pages...if you’re looking for a fascinating concept of images, insight into streamlining your digital sight, and letting your imagination run, then Kost’s book will do exactly what she wanted...Kost has taken to heart her love of photography and used every artery available to produce a book that will not only open an artist’s eyes to the beauty of photography, but will also give that artist a taste of what it’s like to capture what no one else sees."
-- Joanne Kiggins, BlogCritics.org
"If you have never worked with Curves in Photoshop or other more elaborate refinements, this book will give you a leg-up in those areas. This was, in fact, unexpected when first glancing through the pages. Lots of before and after are included along with good graphs for extrapolating the processes. Any photographer can benefit from this book and will enjoy the visuals as well as the text."
-- LLE, Spartanburg Mac User Group (SMUG)
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"[This book] will stand out among photography books for the sheer brilliance of the photography within its pages."
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