With her stunningly beautiful and truly inspiring Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking (O’Reilly Media, 2006), Julieanne Kost has created one of the very best books on the topic of the creative process of digital photography. It is safe to say that utterly unique and provocative book Kost, who is Adobe’s Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist, will motivate and help focus your digital image making efforts regardless of your skill level or photographic specialty.

Window Seat is structured around a portfolio of more than 150 images that Kost photographed out of commercial airplane windows while traveling for business over a five-year period. In her book, Kost couples her digitally-made images with a description of her creative process. The premise is simple. But there is power in simplicity when a project is executed with the elegance found in Window Seat.
In producing Window Seat, Kost risked creating a book that could have easily been labeled trite. But taking risks is one of the most important aspects of the creative process. And in Kost’s risk-taking has resulted in truly fine photographs. The most compelling images in Window Seat—and the ones Kost likes best—are the most abstract. In these images all sense of place and proportion are lost and the viewer becomes engrossed by the intricate play of patterns and tones. Some of these images are soft and ethereal, most bold and dynamic.

Of considerable note in regard to any book about digital photography is that in Window Seat Kost resists the urge to frame her discussion in relation to film-based photography. She does explain that many of her images were captured on film. But they were digitalized through scanning, and therefore no more and no less digital than those she captured digitally. Kost’s most important photographic tool is Photoshop, and her mastery and comfort in this environment is what allowed her to create the images in Window Seat.

Thousands of photographers have encountered Kost at her highly popular and energetic how-to sessions on Photoshop. Her impressive depth of her Photoshop knowledge of this program is unquestionable, and her wit and enthusiasm are irresistible. But after attending one of her sessions, it is easy to wonder how Kost “walks the talk” in her own life, as her editor Edie Freedman puts it in the introduction. Window Seat shows clearly that Kost walks the talk with passion, insight and humility. Window Seat is both a testament to her creative prowess in digital imaging, as well as her heartfelt desire to encourage other creative people in their own endeavors in the digital realm.

While all of Kost’s individual images are well executed, it is Window Seat a whole that really offers inspiration. Kost opens her book with a section called “The Art of Creative Thinking,” which includes eighteen brief tips on approaching the creative process generally as well as specifically in relation to digital photography. Kost writes openly and honestly and interweaves into her suggestions a brief picture of her personal life and work, making it clear that she is sharing lessons she has leaned first-hand.

The centerpiece of Window Seat is the bulk of Kost’s portfolio with little interruption by text. However, the images are interspersed with short reflections on her creative process in making them. And being able to read Kost’s brief commentary is like having the opportunity to walk though a fine art gallery while the artist quietly makes occasional comments. There is a mellow passion in Kost’s writing, but no pretense.

The layout of Window Seat is simple and clean, intelligent and playful. Surrounded by plenty of white space, Kost’s images are presented in various sizes, with various bleeds, creating an overall rhythm that is rare in today’s photography books. Window Seat features diptychs and triptychs and groupings of all sorts, but the layout never overpowers the photographs. The captions are printed in tiny, unassuming type employing a simple “from – to” format noting the year taken, as in “San Jose to Denver, 2002” and “Chicago to Stockholm, 2005.”

The last 25 pages of Window Seat are dedicated to the “Appendix: Imaging Techniques.” which includes screen shots of tool palettes from Photoshop as well as before and after images of Kost’s processed images. At first this seems incongruous with what Kost has been trying to achieve in Window Seat. But it quickly becomes apparent that the appendix simply serves as another facet of Kost’s desire to share her creative process.

Kost does not spoil her book by turning it into a step-by-step, how-to guide. As with everything in Window Seat, Kost is simply sharing her craft in a manner that naturally inspires others to improve their own crafts. Enrich you own creative journey by taking a seat with Window Seat and enjoying the inspiration offered by sharing Kost’s creative journey.

Tags: Books, Creative Thinking, Digital Photography, Julieanne Kost, Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking