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Large Format Nature Photography
Jack Dykinga, one of the most acclaimed LF photographers,
describes in this new book the techniques he uses in the field to produce
color transparencies of landscape.
This book is valuable for the practical tips given in great details, rather than
general technical information about photography or LF. The images are
beautiful.
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Photographing the Landscape : The Art of Seeing
This book is not a coffee table book in the traditional sense, and is very much a how-to book for
landscape photography. If you are interested in doing LF landscape work, this book is a very useful
primer for getting started. The information is valuable, and the photographs are inspirational.
The book is written from the context of LF photography, but includes some discussion of MF and
35mm also, since many of the topics can be applied to these formats with some modification. It is
also written with color slide film as the basis of discussion, so the reader need not get bogged down
with zone system topics that do not apply to normal color slide films. [Michael Mutmansky]
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Intimations of Paradise
Christopher Burkett photographs intimate portraits
of nature with an 8x10 camera. The compositions are quite classical,
but the images are colorful and exhuberant.
Self-edited with the highest standards,
this is simply the most beautiful
photography book I have seen. The links above point to amazon.com,
but since the book is self-published, you might want to get it
from
the photographer's site.
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In Wilderness is the Preservation of the World
Eliot Porter's images show a remarkable sensibility to the subtlety of
color, fitting for someone who was a pioneer in this domain. The photographs
are all of intimate landscape, another genre he helped firmly
establish. The approach is quite direct, and conveys well the
sense of the fragility of the subjects. Porter has published a great
number of books during the course of his career, many of them with the
Sierra club, but this one, where he interprets visually the words of
Thoreau is the most representative of his style. I actually like the
smaller edition better. Unfortunately most of
the books are out of print, including the retrospective
Eliot Porter
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A
Tree, a Blade of Grass
In this book, Shinzo Maeda examplifies perfectly the Japanese sensibility to
nature. The images are subtle and intimate portraits of rural and wilderness
scenes without any monumental features.
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Ancient America.
David Muench is maybe the best known living landscape
photographer, and has probably published more books than any other
photographer. Of all of them, I fell this one is his best. It
represents the most adequately the breadth of his work, in an
all-encompassing vision of primitive America which has been the core
of his pursuit. The core of David Muench photography consists of
grand landscapes and monumental subjects, often photographed with a wide-angle lens.
Many of the images have a mystical quality.
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Plateau Light.
In his long career, this is the first book in which Muench gives
photographic comments and technical information
for the images, which I am sure other photographers will find
interesting. David and Marc most recent work,
is similarly well documented.
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Landscapes of the Spirit
William Neill's work emphasizes the quiet and serene beauty of nature
through abstract patterns and textures.
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Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau
Jack Dykinga's work combines a documentary style with a sense of
graphic design. This book was instrumental in raising the awareness of
the beauty of the Escalante area, which was eventually protected in a
new National Monument. Equally good are his two books on the desert,
which he reveals as a rich environement of textures and colors:
The Sonoran Desert and
Desert: The Mojave and Death Valley
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Crimes and Splendors : The Desert
Cantos of Richard Misrach
Richard Misrach has a unique and troubling vision of the desert as a place deeply
affected by humans. His vision has contributed to give a new
importance to landscape photography.
Each of his "cantos" portraits a different aspect
of this interaction. He produces painting-like images of luscious
beauty
with an 8x10, even if many of the subjects are of destruction.
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Cape Light
Joel Meyerowitz photographs the summer in Cape Cod Bay with a 8x10
in images of extreme simplicity, which emphasize volumes, color, and light.
His subjects are people, houses, and the edge of the water in
varying moods at different times of the day.
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