5 comments about Richard Kern, Action.

1. I was expecting more from this book. I am usually more fetish photgraphy oriented and was not expecting such "penthouse" type pictures. I was expecting something further from your everyday erotica. This being said the book does have its moments with lighting and composition. For a more varied look at this type of photography I recommend Taschen's The New Erotic Photography wich caters to varying tastes. Not a disappointment no matter what your flavor is.



2. I was really blown away by this book. Pictures are of stunning detail and really show an artistic erotic art.



3. While the second review here is accurate -- and let there be no doubt, many of the photographs in Richard Kern's Action are indeed porn -- it is the first review that tells fans of Kern's work what's in store: This book is an erotic masterpiece. The photographs themselves are marvelously composed and beautifully lit. And the young women Mr. Kern has lensed are remarkably sexy and sexual. Yes, there are shots of women urinating and doing other naughty things for the camera, but, alas, that is what many of us enjoy viewing. In short, Richard Kern's new book is stunning, and those who enjoy his kind of work will not be disappointed. A superb volume, this one.



4. This review isn't to condemn this book, only to inform buyers. If you aren't a fan of Richard Kern before buying this book like me, you won't know the content. While the book is presented in coffee table book format; oversize, hardback, nice paper, ect., much of the photography is identical to what you would find in a porn magazine. Mostly young girls, hardcore shots, girls urinating, insertion of toys, semen on faces, and fettish shots. The accompying dvd is as well not photo reference, but is live footage of the models, again in a very adult nature. Probably not a standard artistic reference book if you're expecting it.



5. The evolution of Richard Kern continues. His new book, Action possesses that quintessential pizzazz that runs throughout all of his work, but it nonetheless has its own unique and wonderful flavor too. Kern has always been attracted to the atypical model - he was photographing girls from the "suicide" genre long before it became fashionable - and his affinity for sexy, young ladies continues.
   
   Within the 280 pages of Action there is a subtle yet piercing element of fetishistic sexuality. Panty clad young sirens drop their bottoms, there's toe-sucking, spread shots, and other forms of tainted affection. All presented in that infamous Richard Kern style. Fan's of Kern's work will find numerous reasons to fall in love with his breathtaking vision all over again. And there's an hour-long DVD too. Action is a can't miss!

5 comments about A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward.

1. A Living Lens is a wonderful collection of photographs that not only demonstrate everyday life of Jews throughout the United States but it is accompanied by a rich text authored by witnesses to this history. Of all the photography books about the Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries thids one ranks at the top. A must see and read.



2. This collection and commentary was great....and more than met our expectations. It sits now on our coffee table for all to review and reminisce.



3. Beautiful book, well written. A book for anyone to share with their children to teach them an important part of our US history.



4. As the grandchild of Polish / Ukraine immigrants who read the Forvitz, this book lovingly captures the memories of a time long gone.



5. Earlier this year, I had participated in a tour, including the old Forward Building in Lower Manhattan, with our guide being one of the photographers for this beuatiful book. I was so happy with the book which arrived in exellent condition.
   
   Thank you.
   
   Renate Stone

4 comments about Master Lighting Guide for Commercial Photographers.

1. What a book. This book takes you from step one all the way to the final stages of photographic lighting. This is what my teachers weren't teaching me. This is a real world application of commercial photography for any photographer at any level. It has helped me comprehend how the simple basics of lighting grow into complex shots that are based upon simple yet exact theories. Wonderfully illustrated and executed.



2. This guide is great for the beginner, but as someone who has been in the photography world for years, I was hoping for something that would push my creative lighting skills. This book definitely did not do that. I also found it to be incredibly boring. While the model shots could be nice for the right person, the hundreds of shots of volleyballs were just horrible. Unless you are a true beginner, skip this book.



3. This book is well done with lots of photos to accentuate the descriptive language. I recommend this book.



4. What skills produce top images and big sales? Lighting has a lot to do with a photo's success or failure, and the basics of commercial lighting are here revealed in a guide covering how to use and capture light. From selecting commercial equipment to creating setups and shooting using panels, grids, umbrellas and more to soften or accent lighting, Master Lighting Guide for Commercial Photographers is filled with both photo how-tos and business tips for neo-professionals. Perfect for the college-level collection strong in photography studies.

2 comments about Lineage: What If The Universe Gave You A Gift?.

1. lineage is a great read."nan-see"transport you straight into a reality await to come forth.
   anyone asking and wanting to know if there is any more to life,than get lineage.
   lineage will point you in the right direction,just a little faith is needed.
   nancy burson book is an instant metaphysical classic.johan D.seeker



2. I read this book with great interest and believe it's an important book. Burson makes the unbelievable believable. It makes sense to be calling these beings "Extra Celestials" as they are like angels, here to help us and change the world for the better. I look forward to connecting with them myself.

5 comments about Jeff Smith's Lighting for Outdoor & Location Portrait Photography.

1. good book for beginnners, but there is not much info, huge color photos, and 128 pages, the space would be much better if was used for more information not photos, because photos I can see on internet for free.
   Also the photos contained in the book are too soft with almost no detail.



2. I enjoyed this book - I LOVE outdoor photography and it gives great advice about different aspects of the game...
   
   I would definitely recommend this book...



3. I was far from impressed with this book.
   
   My biggest problem is with the sample images. There are, on average, several images per page, and every single one of them has a cheesy Photoshop soft focus effect or a diffused glow effect applied to them. The author states over and over again the importance of shadow transition zones, and then goes into photoshop to blur the transition between shadow and highlight and artificially enhance the lighting.
   
   The second problem with this book is that the author insists that artificial lighting on location must be done with portable studio strobes. This is simply not true, and most beginners would benefit from some advice on using speedlights on location, whether singularly or in groups. On-camera flash is what most armatures have, and what most professionals use on location, and there are techniques that allow photographers to get professional results without investing thousands of dollars in studio strobes and portable battery packs. The author avoids the topic completely by saying "If you would not use an on camera flash in the studio, why use it on location?" The answer is that on location you have natural light as your main light and flash as your fill or accent. In the studio you have to create all of the light there. There is a difference.
   
   In short, this book does not provide armatures with the information to get into outdoor portrait lighting right away, but is not nearly inventive enough to give professionals any really new ideas or techniques.



4. 
   
   Being that flying is what it is, I find myself doing more reading and less traveling for educational meetings. The first thing I liked about this book is that it is all Jeff Smith and not a compilation of many authors saying " Well, I do it this way". Within a very few pages, I realized that this is a true gem of a book. I found Jeff Smith challenging concepts that many of us as photographers have been accepting for years. What is more important is that he is correct. In one example, he inquires if we would use on camera flash in the studio. Of course not we think and then he asks.....then why would you do that outdoors? The theme of the book is how to get PROFESSIONAL pictures in location photography be it indoors or out and I think he accomplishes that admirably. He not only explains why he does certain things but why we do it as image makers either consciously or unconsciously.
   There are many facts without a lot of verbiage and although in my compulsive manner, I like to highlight as I read, I found I was highlighting practically everything. Yes, a few of the comments could have been explained better but after more reading you figure out where he is taking you. An excellent, well thought out book that will unquestionably give you pearls to walk away with and whets my appetite for more of his books and thoughts.



5. A good book on the subject, but not very detailed on specific camera settings and other tips; therefore it's not for everybody.

5 comments about Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design.

1. Overall concept is interesting. What we observe, how we are conditioned, how we respond to our environment but quality of book could have been taking further. Instead of being paperback size, it could have been a larger coffee table book with higher quality photos to illustrate points. Rather than having to refer to back of book to understand why image was included, it should have been on the same page as the picture.



2. Yet another lousy book by IDEO. The whole book is nothing but photos. The title "Observations on Intuitive Design" implies to me that they are Jane Fultons observations. Sadly they are not. They are YOUR observations from looking at the pictures. And I paid for this. No written content (to speak of). I'll save you some money; take your camera into a supermarket, a compusa, and a walmart and snap away. Then go home and review them. Done and I saved you some cash. The arrogance of these guys. They slap their name (IDEO) on a collage and call it observations?



3. Excellent book that illustrate the little things that miss our senses and observation day in day out.
   
   Opens up a world of thought for everyone around, expecially designers.



4. At my initial experience of going through this book, I must say that it has too many pictures/photos which one cannot comprehend at first glance. Though they are obscure by nature, but in fact, there are some real meanings toward each situation. It requires some proper thought and understanding of "how" and "why" we go through certain 'thoughtless acts' in our daily lives, and that's exactly the case Jane Fulton Suri has presented in this book. The IDEO process through its power of observation helps to "peer" deeper in those 'un-thought off' understandings in the pictorial situations. However, in order to grasp the meaning behind those pictures/photos, we have to somehow breakdown the boundaries of thought, and unleash our imagination to the next level to comprehend its obscurity. To summaries it all, this book is basically to feed our creative-thinking (and definitely not rational-thinking) process so that we can experience and learn to make products/services better and more versatile.
   
   However, I could have given this book a complete 5-star, with the exception of its price.



5. For some people, this volume merely offers a collection of "humble images" accompanied by a relatively brief narrative which establishes a context or frame-of-reference within which to present the photos. For others such as I, this book achieves Suri's expressed objective which is indicated when she wonders how "designers might be influenced [by the images provided of] visual evidence of the realities of everyday behavior, of design in use. Might reference to such images help designers to be more sensitive to people's experience and needs?" Her hope is that those who see them "will take this same lens to the real world to enrich their own perceptions....The key is looking carefully at what people actually do in various situations and asking [themselves] various questions" to explain what they see. Suri explains that she and her associates at IDEO constantly observe common, everyday human experiences (i.e. "thoughtless acts") to stimulate, guide, and sustain "intuitive design."
   
   Suri explains how this process highlights human needs and problems worth solving; frees designers from existing paradigms through a focus on action; reveals what is intuitive and thereby supports the design of appropriate "cues" (i.e. that which evoke recognition the purpose and accessibility of products, spaces, and services when designing them); tunes designers into relevant cultural patterns and meanings; uncovers significant, often overlooked emotional experiences; harnesses tacit knowledge which inform the design process; and inspires more flexible and enduring solutions to unmet needs.
   
   Of special interest to me is that the photos in this volume capture moments which are comparable with those I experience in my own life. Oh sure, I have been aware of such images but, until sharing Suri's perspectives, I seldom (if ever) gave much thought to them as resources for stimulating new or improved ideas about human relationships, the aesthetics and utility of commonplace products and services, and the physical environment within which people as well as products and services interact. Adults can learn much from children about what is referred to as "the invisibility of the obvious." Those who question that should take a long walk in the woods with (let's say) a four-year old. Children notice so much that adults do not. Suri has reminded me of how interesting, and sometimes how valuable "thoughtless acts" can be.
   
   Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Tom Kelley's The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm. His book seamlessly complements Suri's. Also check out Donald A. Norman's Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things and The Design of Everyday Things, and, Alan Cooper and Robert M. Reimann's About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design as well as Edward Steichen and Carl Sandburg's The Family of Man, Robert Frank's Robert Frank: The Americans, and William Eggleston's Guide. Collections of "humble" (and not-so-humble) images can help us to see more than what we expect, to recognize and appreciate human experience from a variety of different perspectives, and thereby to activate, energize, expand, and nourish our own powers of imagination.

1 comments about Luxury Hotels The Americas (Luxury Hotels).

1. The Luxury book is a beautiful addition to any library, travel lover, or those who love luxury. It was wonderful looking through this book finding some of my favorite hotels in America outlined in spectacular photographs. It makes one want one want to pick up the telephone and call the airlines to make a visit to some of the properties. Being a merchant of the finest luxury home products, these properties go hand in hand. Go splurge and experience them.

5 comments about 100 Suns.

1. 100 Suns is a great book that shows the american nuclear tests from an "artistic" perspective. The images and the edition are spectacular, and the choice of the pictures depends only on his compilator, Michael Light.
   Anyway, if you are looking for an exhaustive nuclear test data, nuclear technology or nuclear consequences, definitely this is not your book.
   But if you can abstract the mortal power from the breath-taking image that a nuclear explosion owns, then you've got the book of the year.
   
   Greetings from Barcelona, Spain



2. If you're buying this book to have beautiful photographic prints of the major nuclear tests, you will definitely be disappointed, as I was, by the book's very poor format/layout. The overwhelming majority of the photographs are printed in such a way that the image is split apart where the paper joins the spine of the book. In other words, you get maybe three-quarters of the photograph on one page, and the remaining quarter on the facing page. What's worse is that many of the photographs are split right in the middle, so the image is completely ruined. I can't believe that they were so stupid as to produce the book in this way. If I had know it was this bad, I wouldn't have wasted my money.



3. This is a beautiful book. Very powerful (no pun intended). Exceptionally well-conceived. Lovely art direction. High printing standards. All of which were established with the author Michael Light's previous book, The Moon. (With a surname such as Light, he was destined to be a photographer.) I first saw a copy of 100 Suns at a friend's place in Paris and, without knowing it was the same photographer who had collated the pictures in both books, said how much its aesthetics and purpose reminded me of The Moon. Rather than NASA's various explorations to the lunar mass (assuming you believe, like me, that they did indeed go to the moon), this book is devoted to the war-mongering Americans' obsession with nuclear warfare. As a counter-balance to the predilection of other superpowers, such as the former USSR and China, for power, the Americans went for gold from the outset, initially possessing a ridiculously huge nuclear arsenal, a dominance that wained during the supposed Cold War (a propaganda exercise to rival the Nazis, if ever there was one). Then, for a spell, the Soviets possessed more nuclear warheads than the Americans, which is perhaps fair enough since they did send the first man into space (well done Yuri). However, throughout the atomic age, the Americans, like the pesky French, the irritable Russians, the stroppy North Koreans, the determined Chinese, the desperate Pakistanis, the resolute Iranians, etc, have continued to conduct tests of nuclear weapons. Unfairly, the French have even arrogantly and selfishly pursued theirs in the Pacific, which, as New Zealanders, my family, friends and I occupy. Is it any wonder we now have global warming? Isn't it at all conceivable that the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nuclear tests conducted underground, on land, at sea and in the air are partially (perhaps even largely) responsible for global warming? These are, after all, mammoth disruptions to the harmony of earth and her atmosphere. I use the word 'mammoth' on purpose too because, like the furry fellow, we may one day be utterly extinct. Of course, if nuclear weapons (and the woeful double bombing of Japan to end the Second World War) are a crucial counterbalance between good and evil, the haves and will haves, they are perhaps a necessary (yet problematic) deterrent. Now, having jumped atop my soap box (actually, bar stool in front of my computer), I must admit that the pictures in 100 Suns are utterly bewitching. To say they are beautiful is fraught with guilt, since it is members of our very species who created and propagated such an evil force. However, in many things evil a kind of beauty resides, whether we wish to concede this or not. And there is something strangely, hypnotically, philosophically haunting about the 100 pictures of nuclear tests in this book. They look like amoeba, jelly fish, demons, and, yes, mushrooms. They appear to be the visual manifestation of some weird hallucinatory concoction - though in this case it's the result of mankind's intellect run amock. Not enough is spoken about the nuclear age. The pictures in this must-have book say much. Let the buyer beware.



4. As terrible as a nuclear detonation can be, this book manages to capture the spectacle and beauty from the above-ground nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site and other detonation sites in the 50s and 60s.
   
   The book is a collection of 100 colour and B&W photos from the US National Archives and LANL of various detonations. Some are taken mere milliseconds after detonation and show fascinating detail. Others show the detonations with soldiers looking on. Aerial shots show the impressive scale of the detonations.
   
   Captions for the photos giving details on the test are listed in the back so as not to distract from the photo itself. It's an interesting book to look through and to see the scale of the above-ground nuclear weapon testing that was done in the middle of the 20th century.



5. Some of the most brilliant photos of nuclear explosions you will EVER find. The book is almost all photos with a small documentary section in the back to help augment the photos. VERY nicely done for the non-technical person.

5 comments about American Ruins.

1. IR photography was popular some 50 years ago and remains an interesting way to view landscapes. The MOST interesting facet of the book is the selection of ruins that, in many cases are little known outside their immediate area.



2. It was a book I wanted. I bought it at the high price. When I got it there is so much type written words where you would expect more pictures. Also the pictures are done in Black and White. Where the ruins blend in and you cannot really see them. Also many of the pictures look the same but say different ruins. So, less type and more color pictures or a better photographer.
   Not worth the money!!!!



3. The book was well put togetheer and had sites in it that I had not been to and knew very little about. The Photography was good and helped with the written explanations of each site.



4. Very good. Saw the book on CBS Sunday Morning. Excellent book and my father-in-law truly enjoyed it. He is difficult to buy gifts but this one was a true winner. Would recommend this book to anyone interested in our past and future. Only issue was 2 day deliver by FedEx was three days- no reason was given.



5. The book was not really what I expected, but the photographs were beautiful. The pictures are really why I am giving this book 4 stars.

5 comments about Stuff on My Cat: The Book.

1. Let's face it, cats are just plain funny. How many of us have secretly put things on our cats and were amazed and amused by the results? We already knew our cats were possessed, but we didn't realize that there were so many OTHER cats out there that were, too!
   
   These pics are a HOOT! I'm going to have to buy several copies of this book, as husband, then brother, etc., found it, and laughed hilariously through the entire book. Now, I can't get the book out of their hands as they said, 'NO, NO, NO - "Stuff on my Cat" is MINE!'



2. This is the funniest cat photo book since Why Paint Cats, which fooled a lot of people into thinking the images were real "cat paintings." But here the photos actually are real. Considering how finicky cats can be, it's amazing so many of them would put up with having so much odd junk piled on them, and then being patient enough so that you could take their picture. If I hadn't seen the book I might not have believed it myself. With so much odd stuff piled on them, the images become sort of live kitty collages. :-) For someone who is both a cat fancier and amateur photographer there is probably no more entertaining book than this.



3. 
   My poor cats have no idea what they have coming the next time I'm drunk off my butt on Jack Daniels' popsicles!



4. Sometimes it is great to have something fun to open at Christmas. This year I gave this book to my new son-in-law, and it was quickly passed around the family. My daughter says that they have it out at their home to share with their guests. Hey, I'm allergic to cats, and I even like it!



5. If you have the Internet none of the pictures are that great. Many of the pictures are online or have been done better since. The paperback is too small to enjoy the collection pages (they display 20 or so pictures on one page). You can get this for someone that doesn't have the Internet, but the paperback isn't good enough so you would need to find a hardback; but I couldn't see paying the price.