1 comments about Luxury for Dogs.

1. I thumbed through this book at Barnes & Noble (where it sells for $50) and was flabbergasted. All this fuss for an animal?? It's outrageous. Clothing, fancy beds, fancy bowls, for a domesticated wolf. The children of Darfur should have it so good. Dog pampering is an insane fad that never should have taken off, and this book shouldn't exist. But it does, and I plan to buy it via Amazon just to add it to my collection of extremely bizarre volumes.

1 comments about iPhoto 2 for Dummies.

1. If you're using iPhoto 2 or even iLife, get this one. It is easy to read and full of information that you can actually use. Check it out!

1 comments about Silver Springs: The Underwater Photography of Bruce Mozert.

1. This is not your typical underwater photography coffee table book!! It is a quirky collection of carefully-posed photographs taken for crowd-pleasing effect, made for publicity pictures and postcards at Silver Springs. The effects are variously surreal, amusing, risque and kitsch. The photographer Bruce Mozert spent an entire career thinking of wacky scenes to shoot, and some of the ideas are brilliant. It's also a testament to the photographer's professionalism and achievement in making the best of the practical constraints (shallow fresh water, breath-holding models, buoyancy). The photographer and the models obviously had a lot of fun doing it. It's great fun to read. There are no stunning world-class masterpieces of technique or artistry here, but there's a style that grows on you. And to my surprise, there are a couple of hidden gems about underwater photography technique. Most of all - you're supposed to enjoy it.

3 comments about Photoshop Cosmetic Surgery: A Comprehensive Guide to Portrait Retouching and Body Transforming (A Lark Photography Book).

1. Well, as a photo retoucher with some experience on a more advanced intermediate level, there was very little in this book to actaully learn something new or groundbreaking.
   How it is layed out and how the examples work is already described by Michal Stukow and I have nothing more to add to that.
   In my opinion it seems a bit too "gimmicy" to use for more serious retouching work and some of the operation results are far too exaggerated and obvious to pass as is.
   Never the less, as a basic book for starting out with retouching it quickly introduce some of the useful techniques one can refine and take many steps further, but if you are looking for a more comprehensive volume on the subject there are far more better ones.



2. I first came across this book while browsing in a book store, and decided that I had to own it. Since much of my photography centers around people and portraits, this book really concentrates on the many things that you can do to to enhance (or, for some fun do the opposite to) these photos. The explanations are clear and the illustrations make the steps easy to follow. I definitely recommend this book.



3. The book contains several examples of basic correction techniques. The examples are well documented, each example consists of before/after and some itermidiate photos. Apart from the photos the book consits of instruction lines like 'set the brush to ...' etc. The week point is that there is hardly any deeper explenation of what is going on.
   
   So this is a nice book if you are learning Photoshop and want to see some baisic Photoshop tools in action. But if you are more serious Photoshop user, I recomend Katrin Eismann 'Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching' which is far more interesting and complete.

No comments about Coco Chanel: Three Weeks/1962.

5 comments about Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq.

1. I just saw this book featured on the PBS show "AIR." It showcased many of the images from the book. Only the most heartless could fail to feel compassion and awe for the people depicted here and the brave photographers who did the work. I cannot accept the remark that the photos are somehow from Saddam's "point of view." They are a facet of the reality, a facet which we as Americans must confront, sooner or later, because it is our government that has set this chain of events in motion.
   
   Ms. Bergin, please, if your idea of fighting for freedom is to deny the truth of suffering, at least have the integrity to spell "freedom" correctly.



2. The photos were very interesting. Seeing the sadness of war is very compelling and heart wrenching. The captions are obviously from a Saddam Hussien Sympathizer point of view. I question if the captions are truthful to the photos or just more journalists propaganda. The less than 20 percent of Iraqis that don't want Freedom are captured in the words wriiten. Great photos ...that is about it. If you hate the American and Iraqi Military...you'll love reading the words.



3. It shows the heart and soul of Iraqis. It shows what they are going through during the US invasion and occupation. Though shot by mostly US photographers, it shows from the Iraqi standpoint. Some of the pictures are disturbing but after all it is the depiction of war and WAR is not a pretty site.
   Kudos to the worthy photographers who put their life in danger to show the whole world an unembedded story.
   I salute you guys!!



4. Truly great work. The world needs people like these guys to
   give us an in-depth view of what's inherently wrong with war. We
   never have known what the other side suffers. Until now. Even the
   'enemy' is human and the pain and suffering of is there to be seen in the
   brows and creases in the faces of those men, women and children.
   
   Keep on the good work and kudos.



5. It is an almost unbearable image. The nude body of an eight-year-old girl killed by American bombs during the "Shock and Awe" campaign in 2003 is being washed for burial by a middle-aged woman dressed entirely in black. There is no obvious blood or gore. On the contrary, it is difficult to figure out just by looking at the photograph what killed her. Her mouth, which is open, almost looks as though it could be drawing in breath and you search her eyes, also open, for any sign of life, any sign that the photograph had been mislabeled. But then you notice the wad of cloth placed between her legs for modesty and remember that Muslims bury their dead as quickly as possible. You take the book, hold it vertically and close to the light and you can see that her lips are colorless and entirely drained of blood. You notice the utterly lifeless quality of her eyes and you realize what you, as an American are guilty of. Osama Bin Laden is alive and well somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan, and this little girl has paid the price for what he did on 9/11.
   
   Kael Alford, the photographer, who has expressed some ambivalence about seeing this photograph published at all, is part of a stunning but often horrifying new book and traveling exhibit called "Unembedded". The exhibit, which is currently being displayed at the "Photographic Gallery" at 252 Front Street in lower Manhattan, features Alford's work as well as photographs by Thorne Anderson, Rita Leistner, and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. All four are freelance photojournalists who work without the protection (or censorship) of the US military, and all four were in Najef for the entire course of the American siege, long after the official media had been whisked out of the city "for their own safety". Alford and Abdul-Ahad, an American from Middletown, New York and an Iraqi who had deserted from Saddam's army six years earlier, were both in Baghdad for the American invasion, and Leistner traveled through the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq and Turkey in the spring of 2003. Indeed, Leistner's portrait of the strikingly beautiful young wife of the Kurdish separatist leader Osman Ocalan almost appears to belong in another exhibit altogether, her confident gaze starring directly into the camera commanding the scene to rise up around her almost as an act of will with little or no effort from the photographer.
   
   The rest of the exhibit is a parade of almost unrelieved horror and chaos, of the dead, the dying, and the damned, an inferno the official media has long since given up trying to cover at all and which the US government would rather the American people didn't see. That the American government would just as soon censor these images and that the extreme right in the United States would label them as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" has not deterred Alford, Anderson, Abdul-Ahad, and Leistner. On the contrary, they have stepped up and performed the job that the official media and Congress are too cowardly or outright compromised to do. They have run, with little or no thought for their own safety, right into the mouth of hell and through sheer courage and artistic integrity given order to the chaos of American occupied Iraq and brought back images few Americans, even soldiers serving in Iraq, have seen, and which Iraqi civilians live with as part of their mundane daily existence. They force us to confront the moral issues of invading Iraq.
   For Alford, Anderson, Leistner, and Abdul-Ahad, the decision to go to Iraq in the first place was not a difficult one to make. Like all real journalists, and unlike the kind of person who would submit to writing government propaganda as part of the "embedded" media, they have a natural instinct to go to "where the action is". Like a fireman rushing into a burning building, this is simply an instinct, and, indeed, one of the most powerful photographs of the exhibit, title "Baghdad, September 12th, 2004, Civilians Flee as US Helicopters attack Haifa Street," distills this into a single image better than I could express it in words.
   
   Earlier in the day, Abdul-Ahad had received a phone call that the insurgents had blown up a Bradley fighting vehicle and that a crowd of Iraqis were celebrating around the burning wreckage. The scene has taken on the appearance of a macabre carnival and that he should get to Haifa Street immediately. But the US military would turn the tables against the Iraqis in a horrifying way and strafe Haifa Street with Apache attack helicopters, killing 22 civilians and wounding over 40 more. In the photo, we see an American helicopter in the upper right hand corner flying out of the frame after pulverizing a building off in the distance, and a crowd of terrified civilians running in our direction. But the photographer is not running away from the horror. He's running towards it, and horror it is. When he arrives on the scene, the Bradley is on fire and people are sprawled out all over Haifa Street dead or dying. Two bodies lie in a clump in like chop meat and blood is pouring out of their heads. Then the helicopters return and Abdul-Ahad is almost killed himself. He survives but he is tortured by what he had seen, and, more importantly, how he had acted. Why had he kept taking photos? Why had he remained an observer when he should have gotten involved? "All the people I had shared my shelter with are dead," he writes. "Every time I look at these pictures I tell myself that I have killed these people. I should have helped instead of taking pictures."
   
   But he doesn't. He can't. He acts on instinct. "Six of us were squeezed into a space less then seven feet wide. Blood started dripping onto my camera and all I could think of was keeping my lens clean."
   
   He does more than keep his lens clean. All four of the photographers in this exhibit not only keep their cool under fire and they not only document the horror of Iraq under the American occupation, they impose order on the blood, gore and the chaos. It becomes almost beautiful to look at. Most of the photos are exposed perfectly. Most are framed perfectly. They follow "the rule of thirds" even in the most extreme circumstances. Somehow Abdul-Ahad manages to take photos that are sharp enough to blow up to 24 x 36 even in the middle of an attack by American helicopters. Somehow Kael Alford, slight, blond, pretty and American manages to keep her hands from shaking in the middle of the siege of Najef in a room full of fundamentalist Shiite militiamen. Somehow she manages to take a good photo of a gigantic portrait of Al Sadr guarded by menacing black clad figures armed with AK-47s who look, if anything, a bit like the demons from the movie "Ghost" who drag evil souls down into hell. One photo by Abdul Ahad, of a teenage boy, lying dead in the middle of Haifa Street framed against the palm trees and the burning Bradley fighting vehicle is composed so perfectly you wonder if its even morally acceptable to look at it. Bullet holes riddle his white shirt, giving it the appearance of a funeral shroud. The photographers lens is less than a few feet away from the boy's head. A bit of flare pokes through the palms trees in the background shining down on the rubble strewn cement, almost giving you the impression that God is reaching down to elevate the his soul into heaven. This is photojournalism that rises to the level of art, Francesco Goya with a digital SLR.
   
   In other words, you have to stop yourself from admiring the technical perfection of these photographs and remind yourself what's going on in front of your eyes. It's one thing to make a painting about the horrors of war. It's another one altogether to use live models. You can understand why Kael Alford and Abdul Ahad feel guilty, like voyeurs and almost see their own skill at taking photos as being somehow immoral.
   
   They shouldn't. The artistry of the photographs and the meticulous observation of all four photographers have given the people of Baghdad and Najef a voice, even in the midst of their destruction. There are almost no shots taken with a telephoto lens. The photographers get up close with a 35mm or a 50mm lens and become, in effect, part of the scene that they're documenting. We see the pain in their eyes and feel the rage in their gestures. What's more, we not only see a culture as its being destroyed, we see what that culture was like before the American occupation and wonder if the Iraqi people have any chance of getting it back. The people in the photographs aren't monsters or victims. They're exactly like us. Slogans blare out from graffiti covered walls. "American soldiers will pay blood for oil." "We love America and Iraq." Women play in the Tigris River out of the gaze of their men and out of the gaze of the American army. Young Madhi Army members wear baseball hats turned around and look more like New York City high school kids than they do the evil terrorists of American propaganda. The mentally ill Rashad Psychiatric Hospital plead that they don't belong in the middle of all of the madness and almost stand in for the Iraqi people as a whole pleading to be freed from the madness of the war. One shot shows the fa?ade of a computer store half blow away revealing a line of new PCs and a poster advertising Microsoft in the Middle East. The brilliant lights of the Ali Shrine illuminate the temporary campground of the Mahdi Army set up in the middle of the third holiest place in Shia Islam. Who are these people who we Americans have decided to torment as revenge for September 11th and yet who still invite western journalists to come into their country and tell their story?
   
   "We left the kids behind to die there alone, Abdul-Ahad writes. "I didn't even try to move any with me. I ran into the entrance of a building and someone grabbed my arm and took me inside. `There's an injured man. Take pictures. Show the world the American democracy, he said.'"

No comments about California Country Style.

5 comments about Caravaggio (Icon Editions).

1. This is by far the crappiest books on painting book ever. The pictures are black and white and look like a photocopy of a bad photocopy. Needless to say, I returned it the next day. Buyer Beware.



2. I would agree with the other reviewers that in many respects this is an excellent book. Mr. Hibbard analyzes Caravaggio's works in terms that are comprehensive, and yet not puffed up with academic hot air. He describes the historical context of the paintings, and often compares individual works of Caravaggio with similar paintings of other artists. He even points out artistic errors, such as the lack of perspective in the hands of a man in the painting Supper At Emmaus. Hibbard talks about the striking use of color in Caravaggio's compositions, and it is here that one can be somewhat disappointed with the book for, the wonderful paintings of Caravaggio are, with very few exceptions, reproduced in a dismal black and white. If you are familiar with Caravaggio, and are most interested in the author's commentary, than this deficiency would probably not bother you. I have John Spike's "Caravaggio" that is full of color plates, but it is more expensive. Although I have not seen it, I understand C. Puglisi's book by the same name also has many color plates. For the relative newcomer to this great painter, I would encourage consideration of one of these other two books as a companion volume to this excellent book.



3. In one of my last classes for my degree, this book was the required text. I am awed by Caravaggio's work anyway, but combine that with Howard Hibbert's insightful text and you have an amazing book. I would definitely recommend this text for anyone interested in this fantastic artist.



4. Caravaggio is one of the greatest artists of the 17th century. In a very brief period of time he managed to exert a influence over all of European painting.

   Caravaggio was the original bad boy of the art world. He was willing to use well known prostitutes as models when portraying the Virgin Mary or to show saints with dirty feet. This offended authorities in Baroque Rome and Caravaggio was often a trial to his patrons. During the majority of his active career he was on the lam fleeing from a murder charge. He burst on the Roman art scene during the height of its influence and spent his last days in Malta in the company of the knights.

   Although Caravaggio's influence was immense immediately after his death where his masterful use of light and shadow was immitated by countless lesser artists. For a number of years Caravaggio's reputation declined. Raphael's influence dominated academic art and Caravaggio's relatively harsh realism was in disfavor. It was only in the 1950's when a major evaluation occurred.

   This book by Howard Hibbard is probably the first of these modern reevaluations of Caravaggio and it is still one of the best. Professor Hibbard is one of the country's leading art historians and he brings considerable scholarship to his study of Caravaggio's work. Although there are plenty of other books on Caravaggio, I think that this book is still the best of lot in terms of understanding Caravaggio's art (his life was sufficiently messy and his sexuality ambiguous to spur the mills of contemporary scholarship for many years). Professor Hibbard's writing is sufficiently free from academic claptrap to make it an invaluable guide to both the specialist and the novice.




5. This is a beautiful book. As a divorced hardworking mother of 3, I spend all of my time reading this book to my children, Isaul (age 90) Gabriella (age 16) and Kraquel (age 3) I also read it to my co-workers where I work, a prositute. This is truley a work of art.

2 comments about The Gardens of California: Four Centuries of Design from Mission to Modern.

1. Great pictures, has given me some great ideas about the garden to go with my Californian Spanish style home here is Australia As there isn't to many of this style home in Australia so the book was very informative in creating a style that goes with this house, a good reference book



2. This book is by noted California landscape artist Nancy Goslee Power, with wonderful photos by Mick Hale and has already become a classic refernece. But it's also just gorgeous and fun to read. Shows a range of gardens from mission times to modern day and you can see the trends, the classics, and plenty to stir your imagination and make you want to either get in the garden or make travel plans.

2 comments about Ansel Adams: Letters, 1916 - 1984.

1. I was amazed at Ansel Adams outlook on life and his art. From reading you can tell he was greatly respected as well as a true artist in more ways than one. If you want to learn more about the man and his character I would highly recommend this book. Amazing really...



2. Pouring over letters to and from Ansel Adams brings you closer to the photographer. From a telegram to his father in 1920 asking for $20.00 to buy a burro (and letting him know that he'd sell it at the end of the season for $10.00) to touching letters to his wife over the years. His descriptions of nature are as wonderful as his photographs. He writes to US presidents, newspaper editors,friends, family and more. You see the scope, imagination,and honesty of a man and a fantastic photographer.

   You laugh,cry and share the man; Ansel Adams. Interesting personal photographs in the book also.