It is said that photographers view life differently. Everything from a child striding down the sidewalk, the fruit at a farmer’s
market, to the jewel-studded shoes on the doormat becomes a potential subject in the mind of a photographer. If you are a female photographer than the social network “Clickin Moms” is nothing new to you. Clickin Moms was founded by professional photographer Kendra Okolita in 2008 and it has grown to the largest female network in the photography industry.
Sarah Wilkerson the CEO of Click Moms, a graduate of Duke University and the University of Texas School of Law, teaches an advance course on photography composition and creativity, and the book “Capture the Moment: The Modern Photographer’s Guide to Finding Beauty in Everyday and Family Life” by Sarah Wilkerson recently made its debut.
Capture the Moment: The Modern Photographer’s Guide to Finding Beauty in Everyday and Family Life represents the creative expression of over 100 female photographers. The book intends to help foster the way we see the world by making lessons and information easily accessible to photographers of all level. But more importantly the book provides…
the motivation to advance, to help you illustrate your world powerfully, and—above all—to empower you to embrace a passion as a creator of beauty, keeper of memories, and teller of stories. 100% of the royalties from this book goes to Ronald McDonald House Charities.
The chapters in this book covered Natural Light, Composition, Storytelling, Fine Art, Black & White and Low Light, and each chapter covered an array of valuable lessons. I enlisted Fashion Photographer Fred Sly of fslyphotography to help me complete those lessons, and although I cannot take credit for the photography, I think the results of our collaboration was pretty amazing.
So just in case you weren’t sure…I absolutely love this book. This book provided great inspiration for an amateur like myself. Now this book will not turn you into an instant photographer overnight, there are no step by step instructions, although the details behind the photo like the ISO, shutter speed, aperture, lens, and camera type were included for each image…that’s as far as it goes in regards to instructions. Now for an advanced photographer, I’m not sure if this will serve as anything more than a coffee table book.
Now it is only fair to warn you… if you own a point and shoot camera, or only use your camera phone to take pictures…this book may not be for you. You need to have a DSLR camera in order to truly take
advantage of this book. However, all is not lost…there are some pretty inspirational composition ideas in this book that any photographer can appreciate.
I think Capture The Moment is a fascinating collaboration of female photographers at various levels of their journey. The most valuable lesson in this book was not at the end of the chapters, the valuable lesson in this book…was the book. The book teaches you to see the world through the eyes of another…Understanding a story without hearing a single word. Life is not picture perfect…Sometimes our vision is blurred and out of focus, Sometimes life is not always black and white, and Sometimes we have no real direction and we just have to sit still with our eyes close and enjoy the moment.
Life is truly unscripted…This is the most powerful aspect of photography. And when you can understand that…then you can truly capture the moment and appreciate the moment for what it was. I think this book is a must have for anyone who is interested in photography.
About the Writer Nerisa Eugenia Waterman
About the Author and CEO of Click Moms Sarah Wilkerson
Duke graduate and former attorney Sarah Wilkerson joined Clickin Moms as a member photographer in 2008 and quickly became a leader in the community. In 2010, she held CM’s first forum-based workshop and spearheaded the development of CMuniversity, an online photography school that provides educational programming to over 2000 photographers each month. Sarah currently resides in Charlottesville with her Army JAG husband, three sons, one daughter, and two dogs. She shoots with a Nikon D4, enjoys tilt-shift and atmospheric black and white work, and instructs CMU’s upper level composition courses. In her free time, Sarah loves research and writing and enjoys lattes, mojitos, flip-flops, and reality tv.
About Fashion Photographer Fred Sly of fslyphotography
Fred Sly is an emerging photographer based in New Jersey. His style is both editorial and photojournalistic. Since purchasing his first DSLR camera, Fred has strived to capture the beauty and diversity within people and share it with the world. He is inspired by the philosophy that photography is the power of Observation, not the application of Technology.
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