First Light A Landscape Photographer's Art

About this book

Drawing on 20 years' experience, Joe Cornish, one of Britain's most distinguished landscape photographers, has distilled the key elements of his craft into a collection of thought-provoking essays accompanied by a selection of his photographs. The subjects range from his beloved North Yorkshire, where he now makes his home, to the rocky canyons of the Colorado Plateau and from the rugged Cornish coast to the rainforests of New Zealand's Fjordland. They have been chosen to reflect the enormous range of his work and to illustrate how he puts his working philosophy into practice. The text accompanying each photograph describes how the picture came to be taken and the considerations - light, weather, timing, composition - which dictated the choice of viewpoint, the selection of film and filters, and so on. Smaller images illustrate alternative shots, or other, less successful treatments, of the same subject or theme. Although full technical data for each photograph is given, the real fascination of the book lies in Joe Cornish's explanations of the thought process that went into creating each of the photographs, many of which were captured after careful planning, while others were created by taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity or a moment of sudden inspiration. These very personal accounts are full of practical advice on subjects ranging from anticipating changes in the weather to the use of filters in order to capture colour as the eye sees it when, unfiltered, the film might show something very different.

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