No comments about The KODAK Most Basic Book of Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book).

5 comments about No Smoking.

1. I love the box it comes in!! So much fun. This is a great table book, it seems to call everyone's attention. Images are amazing and very crisp. But then again, of course, its TASCHEN.



2. First off, I am not a smoker. I have smoked cigarettes before, and enjoy the occasional cigar, but don't consider myself a smoker. However I was intrigued when I saw this book in Barnes and Noble this afternoon (I thought the box was very clever) and ended up sitting down and reading pretty much the entire book.
   
   You don't have to be a smoker to appreciate the effort put into this collection of art, including old advertisements, photos, paintings, and quotes from an array of influential people from the past two centuries. This is not a glorification of smoking; neither is it an indictment. Rather, it asks the reader to forget for awhile their beliefs about smoking and realize what a large part smoking played in American culture as well as European culture.
   
   Yes, smoking can kill you. But to immeadiatly dismiss this book as a nostalgic collection for the fiendish smoker is juvenile, and frankly, disrespectful; like it or not, tobacco has played an enormous part in this country's history. This book does a very good job of taking the reader beyond their beliefs to see a whole world of art, life, and culture that revolved around smoking.



3. The pictures are terrific, and they demonstrate irrefutably that our cultural identity was established by people who smoked like it was their last day alive. What was/is smoking considered cool by some people? Who knows. But all P.C. nonsense aside, this is a fascinating book.



4. Have you even bothered to READ the book, Betty??? The only drivel here is the "nanny-state" prohibitionism you're shoveling. In fact, he's not even an addict--HE QUIT YEARS AGO. I suppose you and your ilk just can't allow things like the truth to get in the way of your opinions. How typical.



5. A silly recounting of smoker's affectations and cravings in a wistful tone devoid of any honest appraisal of risk or corporate malefaction. Just say no!

5 comments about Trek: David Carson, Recent Werk.

1. I think, its one of those books which are useless and less informative... yes it has unique visual appeal but thats not new now, since the age of photoshop all desktop artists are experimenting Design, Type and Photography...So thats what you will find in this book, after every 2 months i try to open it and try to make any sense of this huge,heavy dumb book...but invain. I think its better to buy his previous books rather than buying TREK or TRAP.
   Its Sick!



2. This book got me real excited, before i'd even received it. I waited for it to come from the US to the UK so I could buy it at a price I could afford, and today it came. What a big, beautiful, inspiring book. I'm already a Carson fan, but this book is superb, it's got the lot. I've had and sold all of his earlier books, and figured that this one would make a good replacement for it. I underestimated it's value and content. This book is ten times better than all his other books rolled into one. It's got all the best bits, then some. It's up to date, it's full colour, it's a MASSIVE visual experience. Now I'm a painter, and occasionally a photographer, but I used to be a graphic designer. This book inspires me now. It makes we want to go paint, to go shoot photos, to make collage.
   
   Get it, now, while you can, you couldn't possibly regret it. It's an awesome bargain...



3. Trek is a journey of David Carsons later works....proving that he has an eye for great 'instant' photographic images..the digital age..again a 'tool' in this techno age we live in...yet, Carson has the ability to place the image within a graphic context...making the work appear carefree and accidental..the volume of work and time, cocooned in this portable library is overwhelming..the dedication involved, along with the editing process are themselves masterpieces..take a look if you step outside the 'norm'...



4. What else can you say to this book when you see 400 pages plus of David Carson recent works? This book is one of a kind design book that will answer all your design influence. This book is marveleous and superbly done and when the first time i open this book, the first thing that came out of my mouth is "Oh! My God!". For those who missed Ray Gun a lot, then Trek will answer all your misery of missing Ray Gun.
   
   If you a designer that love Pop Art and Fonts very much, then this book is the right answer. For me, this book is the dictionary of design influence and idea. Don't buy this book if you not a designer because you won't like it.
   
   From the first time i opened this book, i've been using this book as my guide book of all my design since then. Truly, David Carson is my idol!



5. what i enjoy about carson's work, and what this book represents, is a lot of inspiration that can be applied anywhere. i've always felt carson works from a foundation of ideas that root the work, but then a certain immediateness, a looseness, that allows the work to feel fresh and contemporary. thank you, david, for another great book.

1 comments about Sundays with Von Dutch.

1. This is a must have for any fan of Von Dutch. A candid look inside the life of Ken Howard in 1970. Great photos of the legend at home doing what he did best along with alot of interesting info. Packed with tons of excellent up close full color photos that have probably not been seen before this book. Check it out!

5 comments about Macromedia Flash MX for Windows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide).

1. This books really make learning Flash EASY!! If you are new to Flash and you want to start making movies right away, you have to get this book!!!



2. This book is very big on details and I feel I'm learning more about Flash than other books I've used.



3. This book is a descent resource of basic information; that is, if you can find it. That's the most frustrating thing about this book is that it suffers from poor organization and a horrible index that follows it's own inexplicable logic.
   
   E-mail links? No listing in the index. Same for such basic terms as: pop-up windows, navigation, browser windows, publishing, windows, importing, and printing. It was easier and less frustrating to flip through the entire book than to try to figure out the logic of the index.
   
   If you chance on some information that you may need, put a placeholder or a stickynote there immediately; you may never find it again.



4. This 'Visual Quickstart guide' by Katherine Ulrich is really useless and was obviously written for beginners. If you have programming experience and are looking into using flash, I highly recommend that you DO NOT buy this book. The whole books basically teaches motion tweening and using basic drawing tools. It doesnt teach the power of flash or even teach you how to use the built in flash components either. If you want to learn how to make a cat dancing from one side of the stage to the other, than this book is great. If you want to learn how to build rich flash programs, then buy something else. Lets just put it this way: Chapter 14, page 533 finally introduces importing graphics and chapter 13 talks about Authoring Utilities.



5. I would give this book MINUS 5 stars if I could. Look, if you're writing a book about any sort of computer code (unforgiving stuff that doesn't work right if you get a character wrong), I think you have a responsibility to proofread the *@#*! thing. This book doesn't appear to have been proofread or had a technical editor give it more than a cursory glance. It's full of errors that will stop you cold. I've spent countless hours going over the same pages over and over again, trying to guess where the author's mistakes are. What a waste of time. Also, the instructions are written in incredibly unprecise language (terms like "frame", "keyframe" and "blank keyframe" are often used interchangeably - hey, brilliant writer, it makes a difference!), requiring you to guess what the writer really means.
   
   Oh, they also lie: the book claims to have a supporting website with artwork files you can download, yet none exists - go look, there is none (I really could care less about downloading the files, but I was hoping to find a list of corrections for the many errors in the text - and found no ebsite where they claim one exists). I think this is just plain dishonest. Shame on them.
   
   There's no way to contact the author to clarify/correct her errors, either (maybe she didn't want to get reamed by angry people who bought the book sending her email?).
   
   Yeah, I'm mad I wasted 25 bucks on this piece of junk. I recommend you don't make the same mistake I did - instead I suggest you buy a book that the author actually proofread - 'cause this one clearly didn't bother with such trivial matters as getting details right.
   
   This is a really terrible, terrible book, completely irresponsible. It would be a wonderful way to waste many, many hours of your time.
   Feh!

4 comments about Through The Eyes Of The Condor: An Aerial Vision of Latin America.

1. Robert B. Haas is a corporate lawyer in Texas who came to photography fairly late in life. He claims to be afraid of heights, but has spent many hours hanging out of small planes and helicopters all over the world taking pictures of the topography. This volume contains 113 pictures "covering 14 countries and 80 percent of the Latin America land mass" according to the National Geographic.
   
   On first reading, first viewing, rather, I found the images just stunning. I spent two hours lost in the images. As I walked home from the library, the images remained in my memory, but I had a vague feeling that something was missing. I did a bit of research, and found a couple of conflicting descriptions of these beautiful images.
   
   National Geographic was accurate: "Photographs are presented in large double-page panoramas, inviting the viewer to appreciate their abstract qualities and become absorbed in rich details. The aerial perspective gives a generous view of the land below: While large-scale environmental effects may be seen, man's blemishes are mostly diminished when viewed against the vastness of the land. A full-page map highlights countries and specific places photographed."
   
   That word "abstract" gnawed at me. Something was still eludusive. The almost invariably reliable "Library Journal" held the answer.
   
   "Somehow, the dazzling colors and intricate patterns don't add up to the absorbing and informative tour of the southern continent that we expect. Haas ... has developed a formula for identifying a pleasing pattern of water and earth or vegetation and focusing so tightly on it as to deny all context. ... The photos become optical puzzles or animal trophies rather than informative pictures of what passed beneath his aircraft. The procession of 113 photos with minimal text and weak captions is overwhelming, and the excellent photos are subsumed by the weaker ones and those in which digital manipulation has created bizarre coloration or pixelation."
   
   I agree completely with the "Library Journal". Seen just as images, the book is a visual feast, but the pictures feed the senses and leave the intellect asking for more. There's nothing wrong with pretty pictures in a coffee table book, but I want something to think about. Let Marie Arana have the last word given my hot and cold reactions to this book:
   
   From the Preface: "We leap to tell visitors that our countries hold a smorgasbord of landforms--coastline, desert, jungle, mountain, marshland, archipelago--all in defined geographic spaces, and often in dramatic contiguity. The white promontories of the Andes are not far from the impenetrable canopy of the Amazon, where every November the jungle floor is deluged by floodwaters, and jaguars are forced to swim with the pink dolphins. Not until I was flying 5,000 feet above the earth did I see how close and interdependent those landforms truly are. A few minutes in the air can take you from the vernal cliffs of Lima's seaside suburbs to the windblown desert of Chan Chan, the once grand citadel of the Chimu; or from the unforgiving rock over which the conquistadores labored to the green vales of Cajamarca. All of it, interconnected. One."
   
   Robert C. Ross 2008



2. I love this book. I hated the price, sorry, very expensive but I love the pictures. Ann



3. This was an amazing book! The photos have such beautiful color and perspective. As an added bonus, all proceeds from this book sales go to the National Geographic Sociiety!



4. General-interest public lending libraries will appreciate this oversized volume packed with photos sweeping Latin America's landscapes. It comes from a renowned aerial photographer who provides over a hundred images representing his years of travel to fourteen Latin American countries. His photos celebrate towns, people, cultures and geography alike, providing double-page, panoramic photo spreads unparalleled elsewhere. Any collection with any interest in Latin American geography and culture - or geographic photography - needs this amazing, stunning collection.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch

4 comments about Single-Camera Video Production, Fourth Edition (Media Manuals).

1. Musberger is a great book if you're serious about the craft of shooting. The book is written by a pro for pros and those who would like to be. The style is spare, precise, and clear. There is little flair in the book, but if you want to get better at shooting the information is here and well-explained. While the title is "single-camera", most of the information applies in almost any video shooting situation.



2. The fact that a book has reached its fourth edition usually means it has some merit that readers have found useful. If that's the case with this book, it's a mystery to me how the book ever got out of the first edition.
   
   First of all, the title "Single-Camera Video Production" led me to believe that the book's focus is on how to do everything for a video production using a single camera. For the bulk of the book, that's not what it's about. It's really a general book about using a video camera. (One section even illustrates using 5 cameras--rehearsing and preparing talent!)
   
   Second, the illustrations are terrible. They look like they were done by a non-designer using Etch-a-sketch. Further, the drawings of the complex video cameras were so generic and seemingly dated that they were totally useless. However, that didn't matter because I didn't buy the book to learn about video cameras (that keep changing regularly), but rather some wisdom on the production process where the videographer is trying to produce using a single camera.
   
   The reason that this book is rated two-stars instead of 1 (or 0) is because there were some materials on lighting with a single camera that were useful. (However, there was nothing unique and that I couldn't find on the Web for free.)
   
   All in all, this book is a poorly crafted one, and one that I could cobble together with a topic search on the Web. Unfortunately, I think that a good book on Single-Camera Video Production is something that would be very useful. This just isn't it.



3. Mr. Musburger tackles a very wide range of information in a comfortable and easy to read style. He peppers his text with interesting tidbits about TV production and technology and covers a lot of ground.
   
   There are some unfortunate factual errors in this edition (I have not read earlier editions). Focal Press should improve their editing process and attempt to have more industry experts read books like this before going to press.
   
   All in all this is a good overview for someone starting out in video production as long as they continue to seek out other information from various sources. Instructors in the field can furnish errata for their students that will greatly increase the value of this book.
   
   Better fact checking would have made this a strong recommendation.



4. Now in a fully updated and expanded third edition, Single-Camera Video Production by Robert B. Musburger (Associate Professor, School of Communication, University of Houston), is a straightforward and highly recommended guide based upon the author's many years of practical field experience to planning, shooting, and editing video productions shot on location with essentially one camera at the filmmaker's disposal. An excellent resource for student filmmakers, Single-Camera Video Production offers a wealth of technical detail on audio signals, the scanning system, digital signal standards, camera controls, microphone types, and more, including sound advice on the social side of shooting film such as directing talent.

5 comments about Stereo Views: An Illustrated History & Price Guide (Stereo Views).

1. This is a "must-have" book for the serious collector of stereo views and those just now getting interested in this fascinating subject. Waldsmith really knows his stuff. Highly recommended.
   
   -David Burkhart, author of Earthquake Days: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire in 3-D.



2. This is an excellent history of the 19th and early 20th century phenomeon "stereo views" in which two copies of a photograph were produced on a letter-sized card and viewed through a hand-held viewer to see the picture in 3-D effect. You still see these old photo cards occasionally at flea markets and antique shops and they have been avidly collected for generations although this form of entertainment died out around the 1920's. Mr. Waldsmith gives us detailed listings of many of the stereo view cards, price value, and information on many photographers. A wonderful bonus for the baby boom generation is the inclusion of the history of Viewmasters, the "updated" version of SVs a fond memory for children for over 50 years and still being issued today. Waldsmith includes a complete list of Viewmaster photo reels and packets issued up through the book's publication as well as the less popular rivals of Viewmaster in the past. Highly recommended even if you don't collect either stereo views or viewmaster reels and invaluable if you do.



3. The revised edition is excellent, apart from forming a useful catalogue of stereographs to seek out, it is also a wonderful history of the many subjects photographed in 3-D over the years. I rated it at 4 stars rather than 5 because I consider the reduced content of the index to be a retrograde step. Having said that it is a 'must have' for all stereographers.



4. There are prices listed, as well as tips about how to grade collectibles. While prices are always debatable, it is still a great reference. With more than 300 photos on a total 336 pages it is also a wonderful book to browse.

   A true "must have" book for any stereo collector!




5. This is a brand new, year 2002, 336 page book with over 3,000 detailed listings of stereo view collectibles. It has more than 500 black and white photos with a wealth of useful and interesting text on this popular collectible. Chapters include care, condition, and dates of views, evaluating views, leading photographers and publishers and much information on modern era 3-D visual collectibles, including Tru-Vue, Novelviews, View-Master, GAF and more. The volume is completely indexed for easy location of items. Very comprehensive updated value guide. This updated edition is a must for stereo view enthusiasts. Add it to your library.

2 comments about More Quick & Easy Scrapbook Pages (Memory Makers).

1. Another great book for a beginner scrapbooker. It has everything you need to know. Great buy!



2. Being that I am relatively new to scrapbooking, this book is a good place to start. I had also purchased the earlier book (Quick & Easy Scrapbook Pages), and both books are good sources for page layouts. I tend to find that anything that's written by Memory Makers is a sure winner.

2 comments about Venetian Gardens.

1. I'm a huge fan of all things Venetian - art, architecture, gardens & more. Having been to Venice, there are many parts of it that are private or hidden and you'd never find them. This book shows you the most beautiful private gardens overlooking waterways and internal streets that no tourist would ever see or find. I have it sitting on top of my many stacks of coffee table books and each time I walk by and see the cover I want to sit down and look through it again.



2. This is by far and away the best of books that looks at private Venetian gardens. It covers 27 gardens both historic and contemporary - almost all of them in private hands. Originally published in French, the translation has only a few flaws and is well written with a good deal of both historic and current information. The photographs are really lush and beautiful and the entire publication is beautifully designed and finished. I highly recomend it for lovers of Venice as well as anyone who loves gardening.