What are your top five favorite books of black and white nature landscape photography? If this is too narrow, you can also include books that are mostly, but not exclusively black and white nature landscape photography.
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What are your top five favorite books of black and white nature landscape photography? If this is too narrow, you can also include books that are mostly, but not exclusively black and white nature landscape photography.
1. Landscapes 1975-1979 by Michael Smith
2. The Last Years in Carmel by Edward Weston
3. Bullock by Wynn Bullock
4. Unknown Tuscany by Patrick Alt
5. Quiet Light by John Sexton
+1. Superb.Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Wellman
40 examples by ansel adams
The B&W landscape book for me is Adams' Yosemite and the Range of Light. It's the book that got me into this LF mess in the first place. Second place for me is probably Sexton's Quiet Light.
Most of my other landscape books are heavy on color. Eliot Porter in particular -- not because of the color (although that didn't hurt) but because his landscape subject matter was similar to mine (both of us are on the "other" coast in the US). Porter was a greater influence on me because he made photographs of those "middle distance" landscapes that are more prevalent here. Even if he didn't work much in B&W.
I view AA’s instruction books as wonderful b/w landscape books – The Camera, The Negative, The Print.
Many of these images, of course, appear in his other books of landscapes, such as those mentioned above.
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Oh yeah, one of AA’s oft-forgotten instruction books that also works is “Polaroid Land Photography.”
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I'm inclined to see Ed Burtynsky as a nature landscape photographer in an age of industrialisation and climate change. He doesn't idealise. Most of his work is in colour, but he has shot some black and white, most recently in his book Chai. Chai is a Hebrew word and symbol for life.
So hard to pick just 5, but if I was pressed I'd go with these:
1. Quiet Light, John Sexton
2. A Personal Selection, Brett Weston
3. Light Years, The Photographs of Morley Baer
4. Natural Connections, Paula Chamlee
5. Coastal Romance, Andreas Weidner
A bit of an elaboration on my comment in post #7 about Ed Burtynsky and the idealisation of nature. Burtynsky had made one of the photographs at his show Manufactured Landscapes years before. It was an accomplished landscape photograph, in the traditional vein, of Canada's Rocky Mountains, and included the country's iconic transcontinental passenger train. As was, of course, his point, the photograph was in stark contrast to the photographs that made up Manufactured Landscapes.
The part that is two narrow is the FIVE! :cool: I'll throw out five that are in my top ten, and that many may not be familiar with. In no particular order of preference:
1. Open Country, by Jay Dusard
2. The Canadian Rockies, by Craig Richards
3. Land, by Fay Godwin
4. Orchestrating Icons, by Huntington Witherill
5. Aerial Photographs, by WIlliam Garnett
Besides the others:
1) West from the Colombia, by Robert Adams
2) On This Earth, by Nick Brandt
3) Tone Poems, by Bruce Barnbaum
4) Kenro Izu, a thirty year retrospective
5) Forms of Japan, by Michael Kenna
Landscape of the human face
We will be dust soon
Landscape lasts way longer
As we become it
the new sun of sand
Anything by William Clift (not all is nature/landscape but what the hell, it is all good)
Explorations by Ray McSavaney
Anything by Brett Weston
Anything by Paul Caponigro
Anything by John Sexton
William Garnet "Aerial Photographs" (awesome)
I could go on and on and on and on and.........
Fay Godwin, early John Blakemore.
I have an embarrassing lack of familiarity with B&W LF landscape photographers work in general (not promoted in bookstores that I have frequented over the years) and so abstain on voting.
I can only say that I was blown away by the tonal range and detail of Sexton's Places of Power which prodded me to review his landscape work some of which is extraordinary, and then there is the LF mountain images of Siro Shirahata which showed me how LF B&W (and his color work) could behave in such extreme locations. Adam's Yosemite of course with several stand outs including his subtle Tenaya Creek in Spring (I had a friend now deceased many years who owned an original 11x14 (I think) of this - enjoyable).
I appreciate others sharing their likes so I can explore books for which I have no knowledge. Googling some, Barnbaum's more abstract work and Burtynsky's B&W images look interesting. But what pushed me to try LF was the LF color used in high end interior design magazines, and the LF work of Porter, Hyde and eventually Pat O'Hara (though he used 35mm far too often and eventually moved to 6x7).
I don't have five, but want to give a shout out to Ralph Eugene Meatyard's photographs of Kentucky's Red River Gorge in The Unforeseen Wilderness. That small book really moved me and the photographs will be on exhibit at The Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky starting later in August 2021.
E. Weston, A Adams, W. Bullock, R. Garrod, J. Sexton, B. Weston, P. Caponigro...et al!
Check out Clyde Butcher. Link is to his photos but he does sell books as well.
https://clydebutcher.com/pc/photographs/
Check out Clyde Butcher
+1
I forgot about him. I was gifted one of his books and enjoy many of his images. A friend visited his gallery many years ago and was impressed with his prints. He prefers using modern lenses which adds a certain step up in overall image quality.
favorite books I have...in no order of preference...that would be even tougher than choosing these five out of the rest. I have foregone the Westons, Adams and some of the earlier masters...
Two Saunters: Summer & Winter, Jack Fulton -- a couple of the photos are B&W
Between Dark and Dark, Thomas Joshua Cooper
Revealing Territory, Mark Klett
Mongolia: Land of the Deer Stone, Elaine Ling
Searching for True North, Geir Jordahl
I visited his gallery in Venice FL and watch how they spotted up the prints and went through the whole procedure. Due to his age, he;s pretty much switched to carrying digital. But his digital prints are amazing as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by pdmoylan