Customer Reviews

Barns of Arkansas

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nice pictures. Very relaxing book.

Some pictues are very detailed. I live in Arkansas and it does represent the true beauty of arkansas.

As other reviewers have noted, the photographer was obviously not a professional, but in this case, that's ok. In my opinion, it is better to have scores of imperfect pictures of many barns than to have scores of perfect pictures of just a few. Barns represent an architectural history of regions and ways of life that are rapidly changing. Few farmers today will choose to build beautiful, gigantic wooden barns when prefab steel buildings are cheaper, faster, and easier to maintain.

It does appear that many of the photos were not originally taken with the intention of featuring the barns, but they nevertheless warranted inclusion in the book simply because of the presence of the barns in the frame. And while it is true that powerlines could have been removed to improve the quality of the image, to me they serve as a reminder of the encroachment of modernity into the simpler ways of life that barns represent.

My only serious complaint about the content in general is that there is no record provided of where the barns are located. Some I recognized, and could therefore place, but others were unknown and offered no clues.

More experienced photographers could certainly produce better work, and if they are interested in documenting barns and other interesting structures before they vanish, then by all means I encourage them to do so. In the meantime, though, we should all appreciate and praise the efforts of amateurs.

I don't enjoy doing bad reviews, really, but this is the WORST picture book I have ever seen!

Many of the pictures are blurred, some HORRIBLY so! I would list page numbers but there are none. Mr. Patel has no understanding of depth-of-field. In one shot the foreground grass is in focus but the barn, i.e. SUBJECT of the picture, is completely out of focus! Quite a few barn pictures have power lines running through the image that could have been composed out of the frame by an observant photographer or, at the very least, edited out in post. The vast majority of images are set against the ugliest white skies I've ever seen published in such a book. I won't even mention the typography!

It is the perfect example of how bad an ego trip can get. This is a self-published book. The author is an engineer who photographed barns during weekends of his three-year stay in Arkansas while working on a chemical weapons arsenal that is being destroyed. I'm glad he got around and saw more of the state than our chemical weapons stockpile, but as a life-long resident of the state, I find this book insulting. The only positive thing I can mention is that I'm glad I only borrowed the book from the library and didn't pay money for it.