Customer Reviews

Four Seasons of Racing

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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One of your previous reviewers indicated, after seeing this book, that Barbara must eat, drink and sleep Thoroughbreds, or words to that effect. I know Barbara, and that writer had it right. No one I've ever met loves Thoroughbreds like she does and her love is evident in every outstanding photo that appears in her book. She even baked Spectacular Bid a birthday cake [a photo of him eating it appeared in The Blood Horse magazine!] I collect Thoroughbred books and this is one of the very best. I would have this opinion even if I didn't know Barbara. Because I do know her, I know why her love of the Thoroughbred shines through in each and every photo.

This brilliant photographer must spend every daylight hour at the racetrack or at the many beautiful thoroughbred farms that are pictured in this book. She captures all of the wonderful things that make us love the thoroughbred racehorse.

While photographs of my favorite horses, Cigar and Skip Away, appear in this book, I like the shots taken on the backsides at racetracks even more than the images of famous racehorses. Barbara Livingston's work is great art, her photographs evoke the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I'm around a racehorse.

My wife and I find the photographer did a great job with capturing the feeling of horse racing. The early morning shots with the fog in the air are stunning.

Ms. Livingstone's work is good, but the editing and layout of the book undermine it. She has a number of good shots but many of them are overlaid with small picture-in-picture effects that tend to confuse the eye. In the end, the book ends up looking like a long magazine feature, but does not give us a satisfying feeling of understanding the subject after reading the book. Also, name-dropped a little too much with some of the cameos of "name" horses. Buy it for a souvenir, not for art.