Customer Reviews

Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After fifty years of dabbling in making pictures (starting with Size 116 and 127 Roll films), I have a library full of photographic textbooks, 'coffee table' books, and other specialist photographic publications.

Most books I bought new. Some were already classics when I bought them secondhand. Some rate well enough to be used (read) again and again. Others languish - gathering dust- on the bottom shelf, often simply because I cannot throw any book away. Let's face it, there are some very ordinary books sold as 'the answer to a photographer's prayers'. I have my share of them.

I think Barry Thornton's book,'Edge of Darkness', gets my 'top shelf' award for 2002, and may be on that top shelf for many years. This man writes common sense, in simple terms, and backs his words with recorded deeds. His pictures are nice. I like the way he explains the emotions behind the recording of the images, and the mechanics he employs to produce great negatives. These aspects are key. Once you have a fine negative, time is on your side to make a great picture. And how you approach the making of the negative image, emotionally and technically, will determine the final result.

(Show me a printmaker who says he gets a perfect result first time and I'll show you someone who should be in politics.)

If you want a very informative and readable book, well written, and illustrated with good examples of the Black and White craft, you should buy this book. If you heed Mr Thornton's words, you are bound to benefit in your craft.

"Edge of Darkness" is a very good read.

This is a special book because of its literary elements and its ability to get you thinking. Each chapter is about an individual aspect of black and white photography such as format, grain, and enlargement. Each chapter begins with a rambling obtuse anecdote that somehow (and with great finesse) leads into the subject of the chapter. This book has a literary style that is sorely lacking in most "how to do photography" books (including my own). The key to reading the book is to take what is said in stride and enjoy the ride. I found it to be a fun book to read.

The book reflects a fascinating "left-brain right-brain' mindset that is very much into quantified experimentation yet with an wholesome appreciation of aesthetics. Even if you don't agree with everything that is said, the book will probably motivate you to put a lot more reflection and thought in how you approach monochrome photography. Grainier is sharper? How can that be? Oh, I see.

Sadly, Mr. Thornton passed away unexpectedly in October 2003. This is a great loss to those who like reading photography books since he had much more to say. In any case, Edge of Darkness is a great legacy to a very thoughtful man.

Barry Thornton has come out with a really nice book on how to produce high quality black & white negatives and prints. The book is mainly concerned with 35mm and medium format negatives, although his approach is perfectly applicable to large format. I have prepared his two bath methol formula (shown in the book) and obtained really beautiful negatives, in terms of grain, sharpness and tonality, from a Leica and a Hasselblad. My next step will be to try Dixactol, a developer he has formulated and explains in the book, and which you can get, in the USA, from Photographers Formulary.
In my many years enjoying photography as an advanced amateur, I was unable to produce negatives and prints as good as those I am getting now, after reading Elements and Edge of Darkness, both books by Barry Thornton. His chemistry and technique really allows to see the power and beauty of high quality camera optics.

THIS BOOK IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The photography I admit , is not brilliant or inspiring but the information contained in the text is excellent. This book is more for someone who already has a limited amount of knowledge og b&w photography. Excellent in depth information...one of only a few books on this subject worth reading.

Mr Thornton is a very good writer. His book is more than a "how-to" book. He describes the way he made each picture and does it in a way that makes you want to do the same thing.

Probably one of the best books on B&W processing I've read in the past 20 years. Too bad the first one published by B.Thornton "Elements" is no longer available. Thornton takes on one myth after another and clearly separates truth from myth in the B&W process flow in the darkroom. Just outstanding reading.... highly recommended.

Vladimir

What a delightful book! Once you've mastered Adam's beautiful books and the other books about serious zone system work this is the sort of book you hope for. Part memoir, part advanced how-to, and part philosophy put to paper in a delightful prose style.
Not exactly for beginners -- the author assumes you know the zone system and are serious about doing your own darkroom work. It also doesn't hurt to have read Anchell's Film Developing Cookbook and the Book of Pyro but not needed. The photos in the book are beautifully printed and yet the cost is reasonable. I hope this publisher will continue in this vein.

Barry Thornton's masterful book is all about what you have to do to take those razor-sharp, etching-clear B&W photos. And it's all about film types and film-speeds and focal lengths and tripods and skylight and development chemistry and enlargement lenses and so on. The book is full of excellent guidance, test set-ups you should be doing to confirm the focus of your camera or the film-speed settings or the alignment of your enlarger or the various developer mixes that are available for B&W chemistry and how each produces sharper or less-sharp images.
Over and over again, he demonstrates that the sharpest photos don't necessarily come from the finest-grained films or the biggest lenses or the most commonly used developer chemistry. In fact, there's a point at which the actual graininess of a film/print -- something you'd think would detract from the sharpness of the image -- actually contributes to the eye's perception of sharpness, of acuity!
This is one of the best written photography books I've ever read -- right up there with Ansel Adams' classic trilogy and the National Geographic Field Guides to Photography.
He starts each chapter with a personal event or story about his life, a place he found and photographed, a person who influenced his work. Then, he takes this narrative subject and makes it the illustration of whatever the topic of the chapter is. Beautifully written. A joy to read! And that's really saying something about a book on photographic techniques!
Of course, the book is printed on high-quality clay paper and is full of exquisite reproductions of Thornton's works. And, like a true technical book, every photo is accompanied by a blurb on the camera, lens, film, development chemistry and times, printing chemistry and times, coatings ..., really, much more information than most readers would care about. But all is meticulously documented and, as you go through the chapters, you come to understand the significance of these technical bits of data -- and the differences in the images they produce.
This is truly an outstanding book on photography, one of the very best I've read -- and I've read dozens! Yes, it's about B&W scenics, mostly. But the lessons it teaches are applicable to ALL photography and will help any photographer to improve. I highly recommend this well-written and very readable book.

As an amateur photographer striving for technical excellence, I found Barry's book and approach extremely useful. I like the way he breaks down the necessary elements of image sharpness and quality into chapters. I can digest them one at a time and try to correct my own shortcomings. The photographs are marvelous and I would have been proud to have created any of them. I only wish Barry were still alive to continue his easy style and dedication to helping photographers. May your memory be eternal!

Excellent book for the beginner or advance photographer looking to refresh their skills. Well written, great photographs. Plan on using it as a reference book in teaching my beginning photography classes.