The Online Photographer

Landscape Beyond

Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Landscape Beyond: A Journey Into Photography
by David Ward
Foreword by Joe Cornish
Paperback, 128 pages
Aurum Press (September 1, 2008)
11.1 x 8.9 inches

$23.07 at Amazon U.S.
£15.49 at Amazon U.K.

Landscape photography is obviously one of the more popular genres. There are numerous "how to" books on the subject at most any large bookstore, and many more via Amazon. They run the gamut from beginner-level nuts 'n' bolts to Photoshop-centric image-editing guides; from general overviews like John Shaw's 1994 guide to the prolific Tim Fitzharris's many books. Almost all of them talk a bit about equipment, a bit about technique, a bit about light, a bit about subjects and locations....

This is all well and good for novices. However, as Mike has pointed out before, these how-to books quickly reach a point of diminishing returns for anyone aspiring to something beyond mere competence. Taking lots of photographs, and deliberately learning from both the successes and failures, will carry you further once you know the basics.

There's also a lot to be said for close study of the work of acknowledged masters of the form, and it bears repeating that there is no substitute for viewing the actual prints. Seeing a museum or gallery exhibition in person can be a revelation. Knowing what's achievable by the best practitioners of the art permits you to set your own sights a little higher. Books are a portable "gallery" for your own home, and once you reach a nominal level of craft you'll gain more from studying a fine monograph than by reading another how-to guide.

Sometimes, though, studying the work of others or heading out with camera and tripod before sunrise aren't enough. Without getting too metaphysical about it, analyzing what you're trying to accomplish perceptually and artistically can be very worthwhile. Trying to translate the full sensory experience of a carpet of mountain wildflowers or a forest waterfall on to a two-dimensional piece of paper is a challenge, to put it mildly. So what actually makes for a compelling landscape photograph?

This is a long-winded (but I hope helpful) introduction to the work of David Ward. He's one of England's pre-eminent landscape photographers, specializing in large-format color images. To make a gross generalization, British landscape photography displays a gentler, human-scale vision compared with the typically spectacular, bombastic American idiom. Ward's work—like that of Charlie Waite, Joe Cornish, or David Noton—tends toward lyrical harmony. To me it "feels" like strings and woodwinds, rather than the bugles and trumpets of Ansel Adams or David Muench. Presumably this is driven by the softer landscape of the British Isles, shaped by human hands over thousands of years.

Landscape Beyond is David Ward's eloquent, thoughtful exploration of the aesthetic structure of landscape photographs. This is several planes higher than the customary "rule of thirds, golden hour light" type of discussion. Ward instead delves into perceptual theory, the properties of beauty, and the nature of mystery. The book is illustrated by his photographs, which are quietly breathtaking. They convey an impression of the contemplative beauty to be found in the natural world.

Ward makes an argument for a particular aesthetic in landscape photography, one centered on the three principles of simplicity, mystery, and beauty. Each is explored at length in remarkably eloquent and lucid essays drawing from multiple fields of inquiry. (Anyone who can meaningfully quote John Keats, John Szarkowski and John Cleese in the same essay has my admiration.)

Simplicity is examined as an artistic theme, starting from the common observation that painters add to a blank canvas, while photographers subtract from a chaotic reality. The gist of the discussion is how difficult, yet how very rewarding it is to distill meaningful simplicity from the wider world. In his exploration of the concept of mystery, Ward begins with the Mona Lisa's ambiguous smile to explain how subtle mysteries hold our attention and pique our curiosity, whereas the facile and obvious image quickly loses our interest despite its initial appeal. His examination of beauty proceeds from Edward Weston's sense of wonder, and touches on sources ranging from Robert Adams to Buckminster Fuller to the Navajo concept of beauty as the embodiment of harmony, order, health and balance. Ward's erudition flows organically; his arguments never feel strained. The final chapter discusses applying a sense of curiosity and exploration to landscape photography, and seeking one's own path rather than imitating images we've seen before.

I find David Ward's metaphysical approach to landscape photography the perfect antidote to ennui and creative block. Just thinking about the perceptual and aesthetic issues in play makes me want to get up at five a.m. and head out to shoot some pictures. Maybe you'll feel the same way.

David Ward's previous book, Landscape Within, covers some of the same issues from a different perspective. In it he explores the web of light linking the physical world with the final print, right brain/left brain thinking and a host of other notions, all with effortless eloquence. Well worth seeking out if you enjoy his written "voice."

Those interested in the traditional photographic notion of pictorial beauty may also want to seek out Katharine Thayer's essay in Lenswork #53, June/July 2004. Thayer gleefully assaults the post-modern disdain for beauty and environmentally-based art as an unhealthy disconnect from the natural world. Folks with recent MFA degrees may be appalled by her logic, but passionate amateurs like myself will find it bracing.

Geoff

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Featured Comment by Andy: "A short BBC video clip of David Ward and Joe Cornish photographing just up the coast from me in Whitby."

Featured Comment by Yanchik: "To generalise about the British Isles is somewhat to miss the point.

"Anyone who has taken more than a superficial interest in the geology, human geography, industry or even weather rapidly comes to realise the extraordinary good luck of any outdoors photographer who happens to be based here.

"Geology from flat misty reclaimed marshlands through chalk scarps, sandy heath, limestone pavement, oak forest, a little strip of tundra, sandstone mountains with hard quartzite caps, old (Ural/Appalachian) glacial granite mountain scenery, new volcanic mountain scenery, tin, copper, coal, pick your preferred fossil era, columnar basalt....

"Of course, there are other places with such a fine variety of scenery, but not so many with it all packed into a tiny area. Comparisons might turn out odious, after all. In my personal opinion, the geological variety translates efficiently into a startling variety of regional dialects, accents and foodstuffs ('cuisines' might be a step too far; I don't want any choking Frenchmen on my conscience!)

"To Martin Doonan's point [in the comments]: take a closer look at David Ward. I don't disagree that Cornish and Waite fall into the Galen Rowell school of hyperfocal Velvia, but Ward definitely makes sallies into graphic/monochrome from time to time. I think it's also a supportable argument that for a general instructional text on landscape, David Ward, Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and Galen Rowell make a very suitable starting point. A book based on Kenna, Sugimoto and Godwin need not fail, but it would be a harder road."

Featured Comment by PSmith: "One problem that British Landscape photography suffers from is lack of originality. The scene on the front of the book, of the streams running across Rannoch Moor and the mountain Buachaille Etive Mor at the start of Glen Coe in the background has been photographed ad nauseam and appears again and again in publications and on web sites. And that tree features in a lot of them! The vantage point is just off the A82 so although it looks like wilderness it's really easy to get to. Honestly you must have to queue up to take it. It's the British equivalent of Half Dome. What I don't understand is the attraction in taking the exact same photograph as everybody else. The fact that it's on the cover of a book by one of the pre-eminent British landscape photographers shows how endemic this problem is."

Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives

Many companies that have gone bust didn't die because of the recession. They failed for one reason: They treated customers poorly

By Joel Spolsky, Inc.

When Circuit City went kaput in January, I didn't waste my time on the chain's so-called going-out-of-business sale. First of all, Circuit City never had anything good in stock, even before it decided to go out of business. A year ago, I looked at the retailer's entire selection of laptops, and all I found were these huge, ugly, shiny things festooned with garish stickers announcing that they had "Intel Inside" and were "Vista Adequate" and "Y2K Ready." Also, I had read on the Consumer Reports website that Circuit City's liquidator had actually raised the price on many items for the going-out-of-business "sale."

Truth be told, I don't think I ever bought anything from Circuit City anyway. On weekends, I would occasionally wander into the local branch, attracted like a moth to the bright wall of plasma TVs. When I actually needed a new TV, however, I found the Circuit City salesperson to be so aggressively unknowledgeable and remarkably useless that I fled to Best Buy, where I was helped by a cheerful, 20-year-old twerp who knew everything. I later learned that in 2007, Circuit City had fired the chain's 3,400 most experienced salespeople and replaced them with generic, untrained, near-minimum-wage workers.

So it was no surprise to me that Circuit City failed...

READ ON at inc.com

Mike

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Disclosure: The Online Photographer is a B&H Photo affiliate.

Featured Comment by Bob McAnally: "I used to live in Northern NJ and shop B&H at their store, and now live in Tennessee and order online. They are great.

"But in the Circuit City closeout, I did make a find. I got a Sony keepsake. I bought the Plexiglas camera mockup used to display their vertical grip, for $10."

Featured Comment by Steve Rosenblum: "My favorite B&H story...I called a number of years ago to order some photo gear. The fellow who answered the phone had the clipped, somewhat brusque speech pattern that is common among New York's Hassidic Jews. When he asked me for my shipping information and I told him my name, he said, 'Rosenblum! Rosenblum! Are you related to the famous Rabbi Rosenblum?' I thought for a moment and said, 'If I am, do I get a discount?' After perhaps a 10-nanosecond pause he said, 'NO!' followed by a chuckle.

"I think we both got a chuckle out of that one."

Random Excellence: Hiroshi Sugimoto

 
Self-portrait by Hiroshi Sugimoto. I must say I like Sugimoto. The more I see of his work, the more his mind emerges, and the more I like the work.

His latest: Lightning Fields, from Modern Painters, at ARTinfo.

Mike
(Thanks to David Emerick)

Standard disclaimer: "Random Excellence" as used here means randomly encountered excellence.

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Super Sony Steal

...Always seeking to save a smidgeon of scarce specie. (Should I now annoyingly adopt "A" appellations to assist in alleviating "S" alliterations?) Note that you get the camera, normal zoom, telephoto zoom, and the vertical grip for $380 off the usual price of $1,179. But I don't know how reliably the really righteous rebate will remain.

Mighty Maddening Mike

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "Anglo American amateur alliteration association, applauding any and all attempts, accomplishments, and achievements advancing alliteration, acclaims above accomplishment and accordingly admits aforesaid's author as an affiliate."

Question from robert e: "There seem to be substantial instant rebates on select SLR's from just about all the major brands (including Hasselblad!). Any idea what's going on?"

Eamon replies: The instant rebates (with the possible exception of Hasselblad's) would be mostly in reaction to yen/dollar exchange rate fluctuations (and only secondarily in response to other business conditions).

For most of 2008, the yen gained value against the dollar and finally, in late 2008/early 2009 most of the U.S. camera sales subsidiaries raised many of their prices to account for the lower value of the dollar.

But in the past two months, the dollar has rebounded a bit against the yen (10% or so). That means Japanese cameras have gotten cheaper to import again, and rebates are by far the most common mechanism used by the U.S. subsidiaries to pass savings from lower import costs on to the consumer.

Epic Curtis Up for Sale

Edward S. Curtis, Three Chiefs, Piegan, 1900

Popular with the public and beloved of knock-off coffee-table-book printers, the work of photographer Edward S. Curtis has for scholars long occupied an uneasy middle ground between priceless documentary record and romanticized, artistic pictorialism. However, there's no questioning the appeal or beauty—or desirability—of his epic masterwork, the twenty-volume series The North American Indian. It is to American photobook collectors approximately what Audubon's Birds of North America is for book collectors in general—oversized, unobtainable, monolithic. It rarely becomes available, most copies being locked up in museum collections.

The set that originally belonged to railroad magnate James J. Hill, number 130 from an edition of 272, goes up for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City on May 14. It's estimated to sell for $250,000 to $350,000.

Documenting the vanishing tribal customs, dress, and ways of life of indigenous Native Americans, each volume contains 75 hand-pressed photogravures and 300 pages of text. The project took Curtis nearly 25 years (1907 to 1930) to complete, and might never have been finished were it not for a personal recommendation letter from Teddy Roosevelt that helped garner the financial support of J.P. Morgan in 1906.

Also featured in the May 14 Swann sale are more than 20 individual photographs by Curtis, among them "Three Chiefs, Piegan," a unique, mural-size platinum print, the largest known print Curtis made, 1900 ($20,000 to $30,000); and "The Vanishing Race,"* an oversize platinum print, 1904 ($18,000 to $22,000).

The two-part sale will include both Photographic Literature and Fine Photographs. A number of other influential photographs will be available, such as Edward Steichen’s sunlit pictorialist view of "Mrs. Steichen and the Steichen Children, Voulangis, France," silver print, 1908 ($12,000 to $18,000) (above right), and a selection of works by Edward Weston, including "Dunes at Oceano," silver print, 1936 ($30,000 to $40,000).

Mike

*Note that "the race" has not "vanished"; the U.S. Census Bureau estimated there were 2,786,652 Native Americans in the U.S. in 2003. There are 11 Federally recognized tribes here in Wisconsin—unofficially, the number is more like 32.

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Question from Reg Paley UK: "As a matter of interest what is a 'mural size' print? or an 'oversize print'?"

Mike replies: Sorry, I let that word carry over from the press release. Here's the catalog entry:

Sale 2180 Lot 165

CURTIS, EDWARD S. (1868-1952)
"Three Chiefs, Piegan." Platinum print, 16x20 inches (40.6x50.8 cm.), with Curtis' signature, in ink, on recto and a numeric notation in the negative; in an original Curtis black oak frame. 1900
Estimate $10,000-15,000

Bear in mind that what constitutes "mural"- or "over"-sized will depend on the date and the medium; Curtis would have made most of his prints by contact, meaning the print and the negative used for the print (although not always necessarily the original negative) would be the same size. So 16x20 inches would in this case be exceptionally large.

By contrast, I remember hearing the in '80s that Richard Misrach supplied his gallery with standard-sized 20x24's of some of his desert pictures, and the gallery requested that he provide 16x20's as well because some collectors preferred the smaller size. (They were masked Cibachromes, too, so it wasn't a trivial request.) So it's all relative.

Featured Comment by Ken Jarecke: "All the estimates seem pretty reasonable to me. You can get the whole collection for just a small fraction of what it would cost you to have Richard Prince make a single copy print of one of them."

Do Not Fear the Sun

Sunlight, Contrast, and Exposure

By Carl Weese

There is a fairly common misperception that clear sunlight is "high contrast" light that challenges the capabilities of digital sensors and film. This isn’t so, but I think I know some of the reasons for the misperception.

Our perception of strong sunlight includes its harshness. In bright sun we squint, shade our eyes, reach for sunglasses. Sunlight feels harsh even though it can be flattering for some subjects. I like to photograph buildings in hard sunlight. People or flowers, not so much. But that's an aesthetic choice; it has nothing to do with the ability of photographic media to record a scene in strong sunlight in an accurate and convincing manner.

The dynamic range of a subject, and so the contrast we need to encompass on film or sensor, results from two distinct factors. First there is the reflectance of the subjects in the picture. Few natural objects reflect much less than 10% or much more than 90% of the light that falls on them (recall Ctein’s recent post dealing with the similar limit to the reflectance range of a photographic print). This means that under even lighting, sheer difference in subject reflectance is hard pressed to offer a 4.5 stop range: a white egg on a piece of black velvet is no problem even for a short range (high contrast) color transparency film. But if one part of a uniform subject—imagine a large piece of gray cloth, or a lawn seen from a distance—is in strong light and another in deep shadow, the difference in light reflected back to the camera can be enormous even though the subject is all one tone, a difference much greater than the potential reflectance range of different objects.

So the luminance range of a scene and the difficulty of recording it depends on the stuff in front of the camera, and even more on the nature of the light. Which brings us back to hard-edge, squint-inducing sunlight. When the sunlight comes from behind the camera ("near-axis") it is one of the lowest contrast situations you can encounter. All major surfaces of the subject receive precisely the same light. Axis light makes for shadows so narrow that they just don’t matter and we are left with only the reflectance range of the subject matter itself, not even five stops. Black and white film swallows this range so easily that a print from such a scene on normal contrast paper is apt to be dull and lifeless. Grade 3 or 4 is likely to be needed (or a Zone System style expansion development can be given to the negative). With a typical DSLR camera this range is so short that we’ll probably want to override the camera’s meter and add some exposure in order to "expose to the right" so the recorded data falls in the rich right-hand side of the histogram, then adjust the tones to a full range later, like changing paper grades in the traditional darkroom.

Waterbury, CT, 2008. The sun is behind and above the camera, near-axis light. The only significant shadow is that of the stop sign, and because it lands on light sidewalk, it's bright and open. A shadow on a light surface gives a middle tone, not a dark one.

What happens when the subject is lit from the side, say at an angle between 45° and 90°? Now the shadows widen and we probably want to see into them. That means the film or sensor has to record the reflectance range of the subject matter plus the difference of intensity in the light falling on highlights and shadows. But this is still no big deal.

Torrington, CT, 2009. Even with the sunlight fully from the side, the tonal range is no strain for the sensor of my Pentax K20D, in fact I raised the ACR slider for Black Point a bit to reinforce the deepest tones.

As the highly informative data sheets that used to come in film boxes would have told us, there is generally a three stop difference between full sunlight and “open shade” (open shade is a subject position where direct sunlight is blocked but the light of the open sky is available). In practice this means that the sunlight parts of the picture are receiving at most three stops more light than the broad (open) shadows.

Torrington, CT, 2009. The street and wall are in "open shade," lit only by the overhead blue sky with no direct or bounced light, but the sensor manages to hold detail all the way up to the white signs in full sun. I used a modest amount of both Recovery and Fill Light in ACR.

The exposure difference between light and shade is often less than three stops because of light bounce from objects in the environment. If there are clouds in the sky, shadow values can rise more than a stop because white clouds reflect sunlight down to the ground. So a scene with a typical distribution of subject values in a situation where there is a bit of bounce light and a few clouds in the sky may add only two stops of dynamic range to the reflectance range of the subject. So maybe seven stops. This pushes the range transparency film can record, but is well within range for modern sensors, and a piece of cake for negative film, as long as the exposure is set correctly.

All the dynamic range in the world won’t help unless the exposure makes use of that range intelligently.

Mine That Bird! (OT)

Calvin Borel brought Mine That Bird from out of nowhere. This colt can run.

If you didn't see the Kentucky Derby yesterday, you missed a spectacular race. But don't feel too bad, because nobody watching on television saw it either.

The camera work during the running completely missed the significant action as 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird pulled the second greatest upset in the Derby's 135-year history.

Not till you could see the overhead view in the replays could you see what really happened—a stunning, fluid run for daylight worthy of Walter Payton, by a horse whose fleet speed made him look like a gazelle among wildebeest. Absolutely remarkable.

Fortunately, after the tragedies of recent years, the the only one who pulled up lame in this race was...Tom Durkin. From way, way back, Mine That Bird threaded his way magically through the field and barely squeezed by on the rail. When he took the lead nobody watching on television had the slightest idea who he was! Durkin, calling the race, was as surprised as everybody else—so surprised that Mine That Bird was three lengths in front before Durkin dared call the horse's name! He probably just didn't want to call the wrong name. Couldn't believe his eyes, maybe? It simply couldn't be the same horse who had been dead last on the backstretch, could it?

Here's the overhead view of the home stretch run. This is the must-see. It is really something.

Mike
(Thanks to Peter Robinson for the link. Photo credit: unknown)

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Featured Comment by Pen Waggener: "Living in Kentucky, I often catch flack for not watching the Derby, but I much prefer to listen to them call it on the once-legendary WHAS 840 AM, because the guys calling for radio really know how to describe the action, and because—knowing the races—they get really excited calling the Derby. Sometimes I get chillbumps. Yesterday I watched on television instead, and I remember feeling intense frustration as the horses came down the stretch while the TV announcer fell mute. Next year it's back to AM radio for me!"

Botte Book Bargain Alert

You probably remember our article about John Botte's fine book Aftermath. Just wanted to alert you that the remainder is available again on Amazon for $9.99.

However, unfortunately [rummages in closet], ah, here it is [puts on Bad Host hat]—I can't remember who sent me this tip. Whoever it was, thanks.

Mike

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Darkroom Isn't Dead, Part LXXXIX

I don't know about you, but sometimes I follow interesting auctions on eBay just to find out what will happen. So look what just sold for a respectable $3,000:

(Note: the link won't be permanent.)

The Apo-El 105 is one of the very few true apochromats available to photographers, and one of the few fully diffraction-limited lenses money can buy. It's arguably the very best enlarging lens for medium format to 6x6, especially if you're working in color, and no slouch for 35mm, either. (Rumor has it that Uncle Arthur K. has one of these cast in lucite on his desk. I've never seen a picture to prove it, though, and the Old Aviator has been known to pull a leg or two.) Somewhere, some darkroom worker is rejoicing over the acquisition of a treasure.

Chances are Ctein will have an interesting comment on this post. If he chimes in, I'll post it.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Roger: "Don't forget that Art also proclaimed that his 105 would be buried with him. I suspect that he meant it...."

Featured Comment by Arthur Kramer: "I'm not dead yet. In fact my entire WW II crew of the B-26 Willie the Wolf are all gone now. I am the last man standing of that brave crew."

Art Kramer
344th Bomb Group
Bombardier on B-26 Willie the Wolf
England France Belgium Holland Italy Germany

Mike replies: Hi Arthur! So what about that lens...do you really have one cast in lucite? I should remember, but it's been a long time since those days on CompuServe.

Art Kramer standing by Willie the Wolf, from his website.
It was the 344th that led the 9th Air Force into battle on D-Day.

Featured Comment by Walter Dufresne: "My top five most vivid pictorial memories from a quarter century ago include focusing oil-mounted Kodachrome transparencies—including Helen Levitt's—in Frank Tartaro's dye transfer shop in New York City. Frank used Apo El Nikkors in several focal lengths. Studying the projected transparency through a high-resolution grain focuser was thrilling. Thank you, Frank, Helen, and Nikon."

Or Is 'To Curmudge' Not a Verb?

Abebooks.com, the source for used books, sent out a list of its most expensive sales in April. On the plus side, it's nice that #3 is, at least in part, a photography title (and readily available for far less if you'll settle for the non-limited version); on the minus side, it's a little discouraging that even a bookseller doesn't know when to use a semicolon instead of a comma. But I curmudge.

Mike

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Featured Comment by John Taylor: "In the words of Calvin & Hobbes, 'verbing weirds language.' That said, English being beyond weird, 'curmudge' certainly looks to be a very useful weirding!"

TOP's Holding an Event!

Strange though this might seem given what I said the other day about my attitude towards contests, it's now pretty certain that The Online Photographer will be staging one...except I've decided to call it an "event" rather than a contest*.

I've got some great judges lined up. There will be an entry fee—to help keep the numbers of entries down and the entries serious—but it will be modest. At no time will TOP or any entity associated with our event make any claim to any rights relating to your work—you'll retain 100% ownership at all times, including the right to withdraw your photo at any time.

The Event (it will have a name, but I won't reveal that just yet) will have several interesting stages; one might even call them "twists." The top prizes will not be specified exactly, but they might well be quite lucrative. Entrants will be limited for this event, although you'll be on your honor as to whether you qualify or not. (I'll explain what all this means in due course.)

I must say it's been very interesting designing this Event; once I settled a few key problems, everything seemed to fall into place.

I need to run the mechanics of the Event and the text of the announcement past the judges for their input, but once I hear from them I'll post the details. After that, we'll start with profiles of the judges. Stay tuned!

I hope this will be fun....

Mike

*To explain why, I've decided to plead the Parent Clause—"because I said so!" In other words, there's no real reason for it. I just want to.

Featured Comment by Andy Burday: "Kittens? Bumblebees? Puppies? Pshaw. I have a picture of a sunset that I took with my 14–24mm set to 14mm on FF. It's looking over a crystal-clear lake with a range of rugged, snow-capped mountains beyond. There is a canoe on the near shore, set at an attractive diagonal so as to draw the viewer's eye into the frame. I stacked a CP on top of a 2-stop GND filter. I set WB to fluorescent and turned contrast and saturation up to 11. Read it and weep, also-rans. Your kittens are terminated."

Featured Comment by John Bates: "Please, please, please let the judging rules involve the Prisoner's Dilemma."

Updates

A Mystery of the West is Solved

By Kirk Johnson, The New York Times

DENVER—The gifted young idealist who slips the bonds of civilization and prevails against the wild, or fails in the trying, is a recurring theme of the American West—not to mention Hollywood.

Everett Ruess in many ways defined the template. A poet, painter and confidant to a leathery set of Western artists in the 1930s, including Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams, the 20-year-old Mr. Ruess rode off into the desert of the Southwest in 1934 with two burros and a notebook full of dreams, never to be seen again. Over the next 75 years, the West became tamer, but Mr. Ruess and his legend did not, and the lingering mystery of his disappearance only added to the romantic aura of the time and fueled the periodic search for evidence of his fate.

Now the circle has been closed...

READ ON at nytimes.com

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Storm Chaser, Revised

The revised and expanded edition of Jim Reed's book, Storm Chaser: A Photographer's Journey (Harry N. Abrams) hits bookstores today. It includes 16 new pages, for a total of 194 color photos.

You can preview the new paperback at the website, which features more than 40 photos from the book, excerpts, testimonials, a video of storm chasing, media interviews, purchase information, and more.

The new cover is a shot of Jim running up to a tornado while testing a pre-production model of Nikon's D700.

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Polaroid Art Has Price But No Place

Stuck in limbo, for now, is Polaroid's collection of photos taken by some of the biggest names in 20th-century art.

By Jennifer Bjorhus, The Star Tribune

Late one night last November, Doug Kelley sat in his family room in Bloomington, sifting through a stack of the day's legal work. Kelley is the court-appointed receiver in the Tom Petters case, a surrogate CEO running what's left of the jailed businessman's companies and squeezing out cash for the investors Petters allegedly bilked of $3.5 billion.

In the stack of legal papers was a bid for the assets of Polaroid, which Petters had bought four years earlier for $426 million and moved to Minnetonka. A small line item in the bid caught his eye: The Polaroid Art collection. $10 million...

READ ON at startribune.com

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New Works by Photography's Old Masters

By Randy Kennedy, The New York Times

When the three weathered cardboard boxes—known collectively, and cinematically, as the Mexican suitcase—arrived at the International Center of Photography more than a year ago, one of the first things a conservator did was bend down and sniff the film coiled inside, fearful of a telltale acrid odor, a sign of nitrate decay.

[Gerda Taro, Paris] 1935, by Fred Stein

But the rolls turned out to be in remarkably good shape despite being almost untouched for 70 years. And so began a painstaking process of unfurling, scanning and trying to make sense of some 4,300 negatives taken by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, groundbreaking work that was long thought to be lost but resurfaced several years ago in Mexico City.

What the center’s scholars have found among the 126 rolls over the last several months are a number of previously unknown shots by Capa, one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency and a pioneering war photographer, and by Taro, his professional partner and companion, who died in 1937 when she was struck by a tank...

READ ON at nytimes.com

Mike
(Thanks to Vance Cowan, Jim Reed, Mike Budd, and David Goldfarb)

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