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to blend your mind’s eye into a pictorial moment each time you carry your camera. The most important lessons from depth of field to composition will astound your subconscious only to show up in your best images. Think Before You Shoot helps simplify and illuminate your personal approach by slowly discontinuing those old bad habits that may get in the way of your new-found growth. Key knowledge and critical thinking are some of the things that will make your ideas convert into simple and beautiful photographs. Becoming comfortable and finding your own way can be the best way to travel on this photographic journey. Make it a point to enjoy this book as much as I have by letting Santino Zafarana soothe your creative soul as a personal guide along your individual photographic journey. Ken Chang, Photographer and professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York
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Introduction: The Journey by Tracey Landworth In Think Before You Shoot Santino Zafarana takes readers on an inspirational journey to learn not only how to take photographs, but more importantly, how to see. Santino’s philosophy and the secret to his success as an inspirational photographer begins with the deep understanding that a photograph is far more than measurements of f/stops, shutter, and iso. His goal always is to create images that have the power to ignite thought, imagination, feeling, and understanding. With this book, Santino the photographer and teacher offers you not only ways to employ a multitude of techniques, but also to become a more masterful photographer. Think Before You Shoot is in truth an intimate journey. Santino provides a roadmap to understanding the art of seeing, and beyond that how to convert vision into a powerful and conscious photograph. In other words, this book will teach you how to think before you shoot. As you look at your subject and before you press the shutter button, it is vital that you stop to observe—for the briefest moment—and, in that moment, that you learn how to answer four critical questions: • • • •
What are you looking at? Why does this image captivate you? What elements should remain in the image? How can you show your viewer all that you see?
Santino takes you on a visual journey, and as he does, he guides you in how to make taking photographs a conscious act. That split second between pointing and shooting will become instinctual. Now and then, of course, we all have captured wondrous images simply by pointing and shooting, but Santino’s goal is to help you to develop the instincts that will turn those accidents into frequent and conscious creations. As Santino’s life and work partner for over twenty years I have both watched him work and taught photography with him. Naturally, we sometimes have different answers to those important questions, but there has never been a moment when I haven’t stood in admiration of his ability to inspire and convey knowledge and understanding to me, to our students, and to our fellow photographers.
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It is a pleasure to introduce you to this masterful mind.
Tracey Landworth
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above: down the green spiral
• 2011
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“When words become blurred and distorted, it’s best to focus with photographs.” - Santino Zafarana
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above: modesty
• 1986
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“Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson
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above: depth soul song
• 2018 following spread: stillness • 2016
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“I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect.” - Garry Winogrand
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