3 comments about The Early Years.

1. Andre Kertesz is perhaps the greatest photographer of the the twentieth century, certainly the pre-eminent photo-journalist of his era. No other photographer has some many great works, covering such all aspects of photography (portrait, landscape, urban, etc, over some many decades. This superbly presented "small" book, details his early work in loving detail. One sense the sensuality and freedom of his early years, living untrammeled in the first decade or so of the last century in Hungary. There is a freshness, unbridled enthusiasm for life in these early works. Yet so too is his trademark playing with light and shadows, and the solo figure set in contrast, hinting at both menace and loneliness. A lovely volume and a joy to look at.



2. Andre Kertesz passed away in 1985. As Kertesz' friends and associates were cleaning out his apartment, they found a collection of contact prints that he made as a young man. "The Early Years" was published twenty years after his death and is a compilation of the best of his contact sheet photos from the period of 1912-1925.
   
   What is so extraordinary about this book is just how small it is. Many of the published images are 1" x 2". The largest prints are probably 2" x 3". Although the photos are tiny in size they are nevertheless very sharp. The other extraordinary thing about this work is that Kertesz' genius is so readily apparent even as a very young man. There are photos he took as a teenager that have already have that mature Kertesz feel about them. Some of the photos are simply extraordinary.
   
   This is a book for someone who already knows Kertesz photography and appreciates his aesthetic. This is not a book for the novice. This book was a real pleasure and I look forward to find other books of his early work with larger prints. Recommended.



3. This is a beautiful little book. I have admired Kertesz's photos, and my favorite, a street in Prague, is in it. But I must emphasize that it is little! The photos are only a couple of inches in size, so it is hard to really see them! I hadn't noticed how small the format of the book was when I ordered it.

1 comments about Another Way of Telling.

1. Berger's theories in this book are very complex but he supports his ideas well. The novel is structured in a very opinionated way. I feel that if he had been less critical about other artists then the book would have been more engaging. Berger is over-confident in his abilities of perception. He tries to engage the reader to deep in his thoughts. It makes it more confusing. Another strange book to read of his is Ways of Seeing. It has a good meaning however I don't like the unpleasent images. John Berger is a very "weird" & unique author.

5 comments about David Plowden: Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photography.

1. My copy of this exquisite book arrived this morning and I immediately had to sit down with it. It is a beautifully made volume. The print quality is superb: rich black blacks and almost an infinite range of grey tones which bring out the detail in the images. The book is heavy and comfortable in the lap, with pages that open almost totally flat so that the image on them can easily be seen in its entirety. And the images: what a tribute to an artistic life richly lived ----- they are wonderful, deep visual poems about what is disappearing (or has already vanished) in America. The sense of detail on the surfaces of bridges, ships, buildings and the powerful composition of the photographs have much to teach all of us who aspire to make photographs.



2. I've been buying David Plowden's books since the early 1970's, and often give them to friends simply for the joy of sharing. His books have inspired me and provided hundreds of hours of pleasure.
   
   No book to date, however, approaches this volume. It contains the best portfolio of his photographs to date, and is, by far, the best printed. The printing quality--and the size of the prints--is extraordinary. I've been to several of David Plowden's gallery exhibitions where the prints were a fraction of the sizes of these pages. The printing quality of the Great Lakes tugboat Edna G. on page 67, for example, is amazing.
   
   Hard as it is to remember the recent past, America was once both an industrial power and a land of vibrant small towns and an efficient transportation system. David Plowden photography captures both the sheer majesty of Chicago steel mills and steam driven transportation and the pride and basic workmanship found in even the smallest small town barbershop, hotel, or railroad station.
   
   The interviews, too, lack the artifice of most "essays" that accompany photo books. David Plowden's personality emerges from his words as well as his photographs.
   
   A word about this price. It may be a bit more than most readers are accustomed for paying. However, once you hold this book in your hand, and experience the sheer quality and quantity of images it contains, you'll probably agree that the book is an excellent value. I would rather have this volume than two, or more, lesser books. It is a "keeper" volume that will inspire the next generation of photographers in your family.
   
   If you have any interest at all in black and white photography, or if you have previously found pleasure and inspiration in Walker Evan's photography, you can be guaranteed that this book will be the best photography book you buy this year.
   
   This book has no competition because David Plowden has no competition in documenting the "lost America" of the last 50 years.



3. I'm a great fan of David Plowden's work. I have a copy of his "insights". Images were beautifully reproduced. I wish I could same the same for "Vanishing Point". Reproductions are mediocre at best. I bought this to give as a gift. I would rather return the book for a refund...although I realize that it is probably too late to do this. This is not the best representation of David Plowden's work and I'm sure he would be disappointed at this effort.



4. David Plowden is the contemporary Ansel Adams in the way he captures images. The detail is superb and the overall image mesmerizing. He is also a delightful person! Thank you, David, for sharing your gift. Even if the subject in the image is gone, we have your photos to appreciate what once was.



5. A trip to the photography section of a well-stocked bookstore will yield shelves full of photographer's monographs. Countless spines arrest the eyes, each one vying to be the stylish work that convinces you that this photographer is the American Master.
   
   And then there is David Plowden.
   
   Plowden is one of the few living links between today and the greats of documentarian photography, the geniuses of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and others who participated in the Farm Services Administration's photography project during the Great Depression. Their work, seminal to the documentary style, was paradoxically emotive, evoking a minimalistic visual poetry. Plowden -- who struck up a friendship with Evans in the late '50s -- built upon this tradition, mixing a lyric style of photography with a documentary sensibility.
   
   Over the course of his career, Plowden has published numerous books, almost always organized along topical lines: great lakes steam boats, great bridges of North America, vanishing small towns. He also has a fascination for railroads, the first love on which he lavished his camera -- indeed his first published photo was in TRAINS Magazine in 1954. This love expanded to encompass all manner of industrial subjects, from steamships and tugboats to steel mills and grain elevators. Now 76 years old, Plowden is at the end of his career, and it seems natural that he would publish a retrospective volume of his photography. Vanishing Point is that work.
   
   The book opens -- after two images and a table of contents-- with a forward by Richard Snow, formerly the editor of American Heritage. Here Snow ably pens a brief discussion of Plowden's career. The brush strokes are light, and those familiar with Plowden's work might criticize it as being repetitive or unnecessary, but it provides a valuable taste of the text and photos to follow, almost as if it were a kind of abstract of the remaining book. A gentle start: so far, so good.
   
   All this changes changes with the turn of the page and a remarkable 14-page introductory essay by Steve Edwards. Edwards brings his journalist sensibilities to the fore as he spins the story of the life and career of David Plowden. In so many ways, the story the journalist tells seems almost cinematic: a troubled childhood in New England, a youth amongst railroad men, a struggle to study a discipline he hated (economics) at Yale in hopes of making himself a better railroad employee following graduation. The reader is treated to the full transit of the photographer's disillusionment with the railroad world and with more common paths of life that would eventually bring him to photography. And here he works for Winston Link, studies under Minor White, and becomes fast friends with Walker Evans.
   
   Edward's portrait is deftly penned with a light touch and a sensitivity to emotions and motives that makes the reader feel they can get inside -- if only for a brief moment -- the heart and mind of the photographer. He is sympathetic, but candid too; Plowden's single-minded devotion to his art often came at the expense of a relationship with his children and eventually cost him his first marriage. The event is part of a repeating pattern of loss that seems endemic to Plowden's drive. Edwards relates a point in 1960, after Plowden had left the studio of Minor White, feeling he had made a great mistake to study photography. The scene is rural Maine, and the photographer is standing the the cab of a steam locomotive on the very last steam-powered run on the line.
   
   "'While that engine died, I sat in the cab in Brownsville Junction and watched the gauge drop to zero,' [Plowden] says. The loss was palpable; the very thing that had provided so much joy and escape during his troubled childhood had vanished."
   
   In the space of a few short sentences, Edwards gets to the burning core of Plowden's modus operandi.
   
   After this come the photographs themselves. Plowden was once scoffed at for being a "topical" photographer; here he wears this on his sleeve, dividing the book into seven thematic chapters of plates. Each is designated by only a roman numeral, with no title, no explanatory text, no attempt at interpretation. It is only the chapter divider, the plates, and in tiny text at the bottom, a plate number and very cursory caption.
   
   Although railroads were Plowden's first love, they are not the focus of the work, and indeed the images of railroads he presents here are not the strongest images in the book. The most amusing thing about these images is the first plate, a photo of a Great Northern steam-powered freight near Wilmar, Minnesota: it violates nearly every rule of railroad photography convention, with no light on the nose of the locomotive, a broad foreground space of snow and haphazard weeds, and a line of poles and wires directly in front of the engine!
   
   In addition to the train-centric images are more domestic moments, with the engines getting washed, maintained, and fueled by engine terminal crews. These images display a cinematic quality that is similar to Link, and indeed many of the plates date from 1959-1960, around the time of Plowden's association with that famous photographic dramatist. There is, however, one key element that is notably different; while Link resorted to everything short of building a personal hydrogen-powered sun to light his subjects with Hitchcockian precision, Plowden has worked only with available light. The result? His images seem fresher and more natural than Link's, as if the events in them had taken place but a few days ago, rather than decades hence.
   
   Far more stunning than the railroad plates are the nautical images, such as plate 31, "Tugboat Julia C. Moran Undocking Liner, Hudson River, New York City (1975)". We are on the forward deck of a Hudson tug, barely seeing more than a few inches of the con. Out forward is a single man -- one of the few humans that Plowden has included in his Hopperesque de-peopled world -- unwrapping one of the ropes that holds the liner to the tug. And behind hims soars the great silver rivet-speckled bow of the hull of an ocean liner, so massive that her decks and superstructure are lost somewhere in an Olympian height beyond the view of the camera.
   
   Bridges are, of course, one of David Plowden's greatest loves, and with boyish glee he gives us great hulking massive flying piles of steel. My favorite is probably one of the closest to me, an image of Newport, Oregon's Yaquina Bay Bridge shown in plate 61. The photo looks down the empty length of the span, and flanked between two gothic concrete spires curves the steel arch of the main bridge. The top nearly disappears into coastal fog, and the far end is barely even there at all. Beyond, there is no world, no ocean, no hills.
   
   Next comes a chapter on industrial subjects, lead by a large set of photographs of the steel making process. Giant metal buckets, glowing molten steel, flashing dancing sparks. After a tour of this mechanical Hades, Plowden takes us on a journey through a litany of "back end" jobs, a hidden world of industry and commerce that few get to see. We see the great ore docks. We meet the solitary men who work in the bellies of steamships. We walk among lunar piles of coal and of iron ore. We get lost amongst the clinical inhumanity of a nuclear power plant.
   
   The fifth chapter could be best described as wastelands. The images here are perhaps the most complex and most postmodern of the book. This America is one that is decaying, where every house hasn't been painted since FDR was president and each car looks like only Richard Roundtree would want to drive it, if it were still 1975 anyway. The bleakness, the desolation, the emptiness here is almost disturbing. Every now and then, I catch a sensation that reminds me of the empty highway-spaces of Jeff Brouws. There is a vague notion of social commentary emerging here, especially in the few plates here that show people; what is the future of the freckle-faced boy from rural West Virginia in plate 132? What kind of life awaits the girl staring out the window in plate 136? The state of paint and repair of her Pennsylvania home doesn't give much hope of stewardship for the world she is about to inherit. And in plate 143, shot in 1967, even the iconic form of the Statue of Liberty is framed by power poles and trash.
   
   Love re-enters the picture in chapter six. Here is rural America, and rural Americana: the small town main street, the general store, the hardware store. This is the world that is fast fleeting, a victim of a rural populace mystified at the decline of tradition and Main Street while they push their shopping carts down the aisles of Wal-Mart. The shop-keepers -- when they appear at all -- are old, their faces as cracked as the paint of their wooden floorboards. And now and then we get children, too, and an old couple in Iowa who keep a clapboard house with Swiss net curtains, and we get the silence of over-furnished empty front parlors from houses that were built when people knew what the heck the word "parlor" even meant.
   
   Storm clouds on the plains of New Mexico opens up the seventh and final chapter of Vanishing Point. It is the same image that is used on the dust jacket, a powerful, sweeping metaphor for the elegy that is the remainder of the book. From here out, there will be no more people, not a single solitary one. Indeed the only identifiable living creature is a single horse -- pale like that ridden by Death in the Four Horseman of the Book of Revelations. It stares out at us kindly from a single small square window in the side of a barn in plate 221. We are alone now, in the plains, navigating by grain elevators. We walk freely amongst barns and inside of feed mills. It seems that dust still hangs in the air, as if someone was just here, just working, but where have they gone? There is a profound solemnity, as if in church, and each successive image shows us less and tells us more.
   
   The final image -- plate 235 -- returns us back to where we and Plowden both began. It is a railroad track. Frost once wrote of two roads that diverged in a wood, one well taken, and one rarely so. Plowden, like the poet, took the one "less travelled by". Here, though, we see the mainline -- the path well worn -- and the diverging route merging towards a switch that unites them. Are we looking backwards from the diverging route of Plowden's life, to see what has gone now collectively behind us? Or are we looking ahead, and seeing that even the route less taken eventually winds to the same common end? Take care and note: there are no buildings. There are no people. There is not even a train. There is only a track that crests over a small rise and disappears, and beyond that, empty hills bearing no promises. It is an evocative image on which to end the collection of photographic plates, especially considering that the book is meant as a retrospective of an entire career.
   
   The closing text of the work is from Plowden himself, and his voice crackles with energy. Here he is full of humor and wit, buoyant in a way that is natural to those who have such a keen sense of loss and of the fleeting nature of time. Here we are imbued in a world of technical geekdom but told in such a loving fashion that, like the sometimes nonsensical phrasing of a T.S. Elliot poem, the reader is enthralled. He tells a hilarious narrative of his bad luck in camera choices, contraptions that seemed bent on being too bulky, too complicated, or too delicate to stand up to the demands he would place on them. The notes read like a letter from a favorite grandfather that you rarely see. It is perhaps the most valuable text in the book, and as precious as any of the photographic plates bound within the book's pages.
   
   This is a heavy book, weighing in at over five pounds. The binding is stout but never gets in the way of viewing the photographic plates, even in the middle of this thick volume. The paper is strong and bright and feels good under the hand. Reproduction on the photos is outstanding with fine tonal range. The design work on the book tends towards minimalist, with subtle tones, simple font choices, and bold charcoal-hued chapter dividers bearing stark roman numerals and nothing more. All the plates are produced in a nearly full-page format, with white margins neither distractingly thin nor drastically wide. Image grouping is carefully planned; where images face each other across pages (which is most of the time), the images act as a kind of diptych, reflecting some common graphic value or subject theme, while images that are strongest on their own are displayed solitary against a blank page. The book looks and feels like every penny of its $100 price.
   
   Vanishing Point is a monumental volume befitting the lifetime's work of one of America's greatest photographers. There is no question that this is one of the finest books I have had the pleasure of adding to my collection in years. It is a shame that some in the world of high art have derided Plowden as a "topical" artist. For every avant-guard photographer the art schools crank out, few will ever achieve the richness and depth of the American soul that David Plowden has. His work stands alongside the paintings of Edward Hopper and the literature of Mark Twain as essential to understanding the uniqueness of American culture. With an outstanding introduction, a collection of stunning plates, and a precious gem of an afterward from Plowden himself, Vanishing Point proves itself the definitive work of Plowden's life. No serious photographer of American culture should be without it. Photography books this fine are rarely printed en-masse; when this book finally sells out, it will likely begin to appreciate in price steadily. Buy it while it's new, before you have to pay twice as much for a used copy.

No comments about Rick Sammon's Exploring the Light: Making the Very Best In-Camera Exposures.

3 comments about How to Take Great Photographs With Any Camera.

1. This is the most informative, uncomplicated, instructional little guide book about photography I have ever read. With a touch of humor and simplicity, Jerry Hughes teaches the wannabe photographer how to be creative with any camera. He knows his art, and he knows how to instruct!



2. I loved this book. It teaches advanced photographic techniques in an easy, understandable manner. The author concisely shares his expertise and simplifies the photographic process to four easy to follow steps.



3. This book is so well organized and visually designed that you can't help but understand the basic concepts of photography. I recently started taking pictures for the first time in years. My husband has taken years of photography class using a manual operated camera. I can now take photographs that are just as good as his with my digital because I understand the concepts so nicely laid out in this book. I'm a teacher and I give the author an A+++ for his work!

5 comments about St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars.

1. I ordered this book but was sent a book on grilling...I returned the grilling book but have not been credited for the st petersburg book..please refer this to the proper dept. thank you!



2. I ordered this book but was sent a book on grilling...I returned the grilling book but have not been credited for the st petersburg book..please refer this to the proper dept. thank you!



3. This can be an expensive book if you're not buying it used, but it's absolutely worth it. The beautiful pictures are excellent at presenting St. Petersburg's amazing architectural wonders. The text is well-written, and even if you don't have a great deal of knowledge of Russian history, you'll still be able to follow along without any trouble.

   A gem - read and enjoy!




4. This is a gorgeous book on a beautiful city. My father would have loved this book, he had an interest in all things Russian, he and my mother toured St. Petersburg and loved it. The images in this book are crisp and text highly informative. St. Petersburg has a wealth of beautiful Imperial Buildings and they are shown at their best in this wonderful book. From Peter the Great's Peterhof to the Hermitage, to Catherine the Great's Tsarkoe Selo, the best of Imperial Russian architecture is on display. If you have any interst in Imperial Russian architecture or just enjoy fine books, then i cannot imagine you being disappointed. Highly recommended.



5. The most gorgeous, comprehensive photographic panorama of the treasures of St. Petersburg. Even if your exposure to St. Petersburg is limited to the Winter Palace, (now the "Hermitage" museum), BUY this book AND buy the unreal, almost surreal DVD "Russian Ark". Both are BREATHTAKING!

1 comments about Riviera Cocktail.

1. This is a very unique, well produced coffee table book / gift. Definitely for someone who enjoys fine arts and nostalgia.

5 comments about Seaside Style.

1. The new Seaside Style book through the pictures of Steven Brooke and the words of Eleanor Lynn Nesmith takes us on a tour inside some of the homes of Seaside. A small town along the Gulf Coast of Florida, Seaside gained world fame as the birthplace of New Urbanism.
   With humor and insight, the author walks us through 23 houses and gives us a glimpse of both the homeowners and their personal style.
   The photographer takes us there with his stunning images.
   A must buy for anyone with an interest in New Urbanisn or viewing the individual styles and the pleasures of living at the beach.



2. As a Seaside neighbor in Old Seagrove I have a special interest in Seaside, but I found the book to be much more than the chance to get inside houses of people I know and others I see every day. While the writing in the style of architectural magazines might be called "gushing," Eleanor Lynn Nesmith subtly focuses her seasoned critical eye on the people who brought more than their money to the "New Urbanism" community. The result is the story of how Seaside got its soul. The somewhat dark--almost broody--photos of Steven Brooke suited my taste, though maybe not everyone's.



3. When one thinks of Seaside, Florida, images of white picket fences, quaint beach cottages painted in pastel colors and tin roofs are evoked. From classic Greek Revival to urban contemporary, the mix of interior and exterior styles fascinate and capture the reader. In Seaside Style, Nesmith allows readers not only to experience the broad range of architectural styles but also tour the interiors of these amazing spaces. Highly recommended for coffee tables from Maine to California and Alabama to Illinois.



4. although the book is lovely to look at, the houses are quite similar and very typical of that particular part of Florida, which I did not realize in the description. My intent was to view houses that would fit in all seaside areas and the book therefore was a disapppointment.



5. You need to know this is just about the place, Seaside, in Florida-which is fabulous. I really enjoyed the book.

3 comments about Andre Kertesz: The Polaroids.

1. André Kertész (1894 - 1985) captured his first photograph while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. A member of the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI, Kertész photographed his experiences of the war until he was wounded in battle in 1915. Unfortunately, many of the images he captured during this time were lost during the Hungarian Revolution of 1918.
   
   Thereafter, this preturnatually gifted poetic soul traveled to Paris (in 1925), where he worked as a freelance photographer and published three books of his images; and on to New York (in 1936), where one of the 20th Century's most gifted photographers was effectively cold-shouldered by the photographic "establishment" and relegated to taking pictures of architecture and home interiors for House and Garden. In what must be one of the most egregious oversights in photographic history, not a single one of his images was selected for Steichen's famous The Family of Man exhibition in 1956! It was only after Kertész retired from commercial work (in 1962) that he was again able to devote his considerable powers of observation and feeling to the same "simple" everyday subjects of his "amateurish" youth. Kertész left behind a legacy of beautiful, meloncholic tonal poems for all future generations of aspiring photographers to marvel at; and to marvel at the breadth and depth of his feeling for the human condition.
   
   As the short publisher's note above describes, Kertesz was despondent after his wife's death. But his beautiful soul awakened anew after Graham Nash (member of the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) gave him a Polaroid SX-70 camera. Kertesz trained his poetic eye mostly on things in his apartment (and a special little abstract acrylic scuplture whose form reminded him of his departed wife); but, oh the wonders his delicate imagery reveals about himself and his world. And through his wondrous art, we see a little more of the world we think we know, but experience mostly at a distance, without the magic that only a poet with a camera can reveal.
   
   Where a photographer like Minor White (whom I hold in great esteem) deliberately used essentially unrecognizable abstract forms to communicate inner states, Kertész instead used immediately recognizable shapes and symbols to convey the nature - and feeling - of his connection (or, more often than not, dis-connection) to the world around him. The fragile interconnected bond between artist and humanity was the real "subject" of Kertész's poetic gaze; and we can all feel it, as we look upon the shapes and tones of his otherwise "ordinary" subjects. His work is less about the traditional subjects of photographs (people, places and things), and more - much more - about his feelings about his relationships with the traditional subjects that came within view of this gentle artistic soul.
   
   This is a beautiful little book that anyone who is interested in fine-art photopgraphy (in the truest sense of the word) would undoubtedly treasure.
   
   "The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it's right, even if I have to go back to "get the proper lighting." - André Kertész.



2. Published in conjunction with gallery shows across the U.S. is ANDRE KERTESZ: THE POLAROIDS, which considers the photographer's final works - some 80 colored Polaroid's capturing his unique use of light. Kertesz pioneered photojournalistic techniques: his inspirations produced a revolutionary body of work and their representation here makes this a fine pick for any library strong in photographer history.



3. Kertesz was a brilliant photographer and this book is more evidence of his abilities. The photographs are taken with a polaroid camera. And they are amazing! Who knew you could convey such emotion with a polaroid and get it to do such amazing things with light and color. Some photos are polaroids of subjects he shot with his other cameras and you can see in other works. But the study of the statues are truly beautiful. If you collect Kertesz - this is a must buy.

5 comments about Waves.

1. This is a very beautiful photo book on a very specialized topic--the photos are exclusively those of ocean waves. There aren't even any surfers in the photos, although there is one or two with a pod of dolphins, and various backdrops are sometimes used, but the waves themselves are truly the protagonists in most of the pictures. The photos show surfing and beach locations all over the world, including famous places like Weimea Bay in Hawaii as well as those I was less familiar with, such as the location in Tahiti, which has very beautiful waves and was featured in a number of the photos.
   
   One striking aspect of the photos is how much the colors of the waves vary, from light sky-blue to a deep marine and saphire blue to a dark, mossy green color. I don't know if this is more from the light or the type of photo emulsion used, or both, but just the spectrum of color possibilities is as varied and diverse as the waves themselves. Not all the waves are big; some are just beautifully shaped or symmetrical, or they are shot with an interesting subject in the background or foreground--such as the one showing San Francisco's Ocean Beach with a lone wave breaking in the background.
   
   This book will be of interest to anyone who appreciates nature photography or the beauty and power of the sea, as reflected in the awesome power of the waves themselves. The text is well written and there is even a brief discussion of the physics of waves and how the power in mechanical foot-pounds of a wave can be calculated, which was developed by a famous oceanographer. (Most of the text isn't nerdy though). :-)



2. Walt Whitman's strophe to the ocean could well be applied to this exciting book that captures the noise, the majesty, and the seduction of the sea - with a special emphasis on the waves. Writer Steve Hawk is a committed wave-rider and has collected a varied group of photographs of the challenging waves that seem at once threatening and exhilarating: the viewer can easily imagine the constant call of the sea to surfers within these pages.
   
   Just as there is an infinite variety of ocean waves, both at sea and as the waves meet the shore, so is there a spectrum of photographs here, photographs that surprise not only in the obvious challenge of those who captured them, but also in the spectrum of colors that light and wind and mists alter their beauty and majesty. The photographers include the well known such as Art Brewer, Wayne Levin, Jeff Divine, Wayne Levin, and Joel Meyerowitz as well as lesser well-known but equally impressive artists. The locations for the photographs are from all around the planet and the variation in the quality of light and perspective is beautifully related to these different vistas.
   
   For the most part Hawk allows the images to speak for themselves, but being a journalist he also interjects some interesting facts and poetry that variably enhance the book. WAVES is a must-have book for those already committed to the sea, but it is also a fine volume of images for those who continue to marvel at the power of nature. Grady Harp, December 06



3. I bought this book because I saw it for sale when I was in Hawaii, but didn't want to carry it home with me and risk the chance of it getting banged up in transit. The photos are beautiful. The only thing I don't like about this book is that some of the photos run from one page to the next, which means that there's a big crease down the center of some of the really great photos. It's a great coffee table book, especially for those of us who live far from the ocean and need a reminder of its beauty.



4. I gave this book as a Christmas present, but not before thumbing through it myself. The pictures are totally awesome and very clear. I thought it would make a good coffee-table book, and that's exactly where my brother put it. He also loved the book, and wanted to check it out before opening other Christmas gifts.... I guess it made an impression. :>)



5. You can actually feel the energy of the waves in some of these shots coming right off the pages. There are some very awesome shots - unusual angles, colors, and just plain spectacular.
   
   Great coffee table book. That's where mine stays, and I still pick it up and flip through it when I'm on the phone.
   
   Mother Nature makes a great model to work with.