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Large Format Nature Photography Jack Dykinga, one of the most acclaimed LF nature 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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In Wildness 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.
This is by far his most influential work, however Porter has published a great number of books during the course of his career. See my extensive survey of Eliot Porter's Books on my blog. |
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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 nature 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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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-published with the highest standards, this is one of the most beautiful photography books 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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Johsel Namkung: A Retrospective Choosing very simple - even mundane subjects, Namkung reveals their beauty in a wealth of detail and texture. Informed by his musical background and his friendships with painters of the Northwest School, his photographs display repetitive but differentiated elements, rhythm of lines, as well as an uncompromising preference for abstraction. A superlative production in all aspects (trim size 16.5 x 13.25), this is this is one of the most impressive photography books I have seen. |
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Crimes and Splendors : The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach Richard Misrach troubling vision of the desert as a place deeply affected by humans as been developed in an unusually long project of epic proportions, which has been influential in contemporary landscape photography. Each of his "cantos" is a chapter of the project which 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 is part of the generation of photographers who are credited with introducing color photography into the contemporary art photography world. In this classic work, hephotographs 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. |