Customer Reviews

Along the Trail: A Photographic Essay of Glacier National Park and the Northern Rocky Mountains.

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ALONG THE TRAIL by Danny On is a 113 page photography book featuring Glacier National Park, but there are also images from nearby Canadian national parks to the north. There are about 100 color photos. About half of these are large, taking up an entire page (or most of an entire page). Many of the photos that I count as a "single photograph" are actually four smaller photographs of plants (or animals), arranged together in a big square with four quadrants.

Only 26 of the photographs are landscapes, the rest are plants and animals. The most interesting landscape photographs include an amazing picture of a goat perched on a ledge, with a dramatic snowy mountain in the background (see cover). Two forested mountains, one bearing a rainbow, are shown on page 26. A row of snowy mountains with a lake and meadow in the foreground appears on page 31. A dramatic image of three sheep on a ledge, with dramatic mountains (resembling castles) in the background is found on page 93. Aside from the cover photo of the mountain goat on the ledge, the best photo is an awesome image of Moraine Lake in Banff, Alberta (page 43).

In my opinion, only two or three of the photos could reasonably be construed as having artistic merit. Therefore, if you are a photographer in need of inspiration, then you should look elsewhere. In view of the many amazing viewpoints found along the Going-To-The-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, there really is no excuse to publish a book about Glacier National Park that is so lacking in artistic images. A number of excellent photographers have produced a body of artistic images from Glacier National Park, for example, Andy Cook, Steve Kossack, and Jason Savage.

The reproductions in this book are not very good. Even though the book is copyrighted 1979, I think that the technology at that time could have done a better job. Generally, the reproductions are like those in National Geographic magazines from the early 1960s. This book is not a good guide for casual vacationers intending to visit Glacier National Park, since most of the photos are close-ups of plants. Moreover, the book fails to identify the location of some of the landscape photographs. The book is actually a memorial to the photographer, who perished in a skiing accident. But people wanting an attractive coffee table book, or wanting inspiration for planning a vacation trip to Glacier National Park, are better off buying a different book.

If you're curious about northwestern Montana and Glacier National Park, this beautifully photographed and superbly written text provides wondrous insights to this wilderness area.