Landscape Within by David Ward

[roteague]

I picked up a copy of "Landscape within - insights and inspiration for photographers" by David Ward a few days ago, and I am almost finished with it. I thought that I would pass along my observations about this book. For those not aware of who David Ward is, he is one of the more well known landscape photographers in the UK, working mainly 5x4. The book is richly illustrated with David's fine landscape work, with many images from the US as well as the UK.

This is NOT your typical landscape photography book, this book is more about the creative process. Some of the questions he asks include:

"Why is it that one view is considered worthy of representation and another not? My motive for writing this book is tro try to answer these and other questions about my own practice, to try to answer why I make my images and why some suceed and others don't."

To answer this question, the author delves into art history and philosophy. It is not the easiest book to read on the subject that I have read, but gives a lot of food for thought. If you can find a copy, I would recommend this book to anybody who has a love of landscape photography.

I'll close this post, with another quote from the book:

"The transposition of the image upon the ground glass of a view camera effects a fresh perspective because our recognition systems become partially uncoupled from our vision and we can concentrate more on the arrangment of forms within the frame".

 

[Baxter Bradford]

I agree Robert, David's "Landscape Within" is an excellent book, which encourages the reader to think a long way beyond merely the technical issues of making an image. He set out to write a book about the "Why?" rather than the more common "How to?"

He covers a lot of ground and you are right, it can be hard going in places. But this is a book to which I find myself returning and always gleaning more information. Others in this category are Joe Cornish's "First Light", Galen Rowell's "The inner game of outdoor photography" and less often nowadays Barry Thornton's "Elements". Those who photograph in B+W ought not dismiss the content of the book as being solely relevant to colour workers, it is about all aspects of making your images as meaningful as they can be.

His photographs deserve a wider audience. They currently lack the public popularity of those by his good friend Joe Cornish, but offer an extremely accomplished aesthetic vision, be they of the vista, or of his preferred "initmate landscape" detail studies. The images in the book are from a wide variety of locations. He loves America and visits at least once a year, leading tours for www.lightandland.co.uk

My favourite phrase is

"... the photograph is anchored to reality by this transient and insubstantial ribbon of photons."

This may well find itself being borrowed for my signature, as I would have been very chuffed indeed to have conjured up that from the keyboard!

 

[roteague]

He covers a lot of ground and you are right, it can be hard going in places. But this is a book to which I find myself returning and always gleaning more information. Others in this category are Joe Cornish's "First Light", Galen Rowell's "The inner game of outdoor photography" and less often nowadays Barry Thornton's "Elements". Those who photograph in B+W ought not dismiss the content of the book as being solely relevant to colour workers, it is about all aspects of making your images as meaningful as they can be.

This one has found a new home in my library. While I have seen David's work for sometime, mainly through UK photo magazines, this was the first time I had seen his work printed in a manner that really showed the quality of his work. I also appreciated the forward by Joe Cornish, very well thought out.

I particulary like the closing statement of the book, which illustrates the writing in this book:

"I hope that this foray in to semiotics hasn't led you to feel that, a one critic dryly remarked, 'semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we can't understand'."