Customer Reviews

Land of the Canyons: A Photographer's Guide to Utah and Arizona, 2nd Edition

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

 

 

I bought this book prior to my 21 day vacation to the Southwest. With few exceptions, I taylored my entire trip around the suggested places mentioned in this book, and visited most of them. The majority of suggestions are off the beaten path and a little aventurous, which I prefer. The author pays a lot of attention to photographic concerns, which helps immensly if you are a photographer, but you need not be to benefit from this book. I found the directions to be very accurate, although route finding skills were still necessary for some of the more remote hikes, such as The Wave, in the Paria Wilderness Area. This book is perfect for getting ideas of places to visit, including numerous slot canyons, and then following up with some additional info from the internet. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone visiting the Southwest, who wants to visit places you've only seen in photography magazines. You won't be disappointed!

I had already been visiting the West for 3 times and I've got a lot of information about this area, but this guide was really very usefull to organise my last summer trip and I discovered this time several fascinating nature spots (like Coyote Buttes / The Wave !) that lots of tourists miss (even if they are very close to them) if they have only got classical touristic guides.

This excellent guide gives you detailled information about how to find theese fabulous sites, how long you need to hike (without backpacking), what moment of the day is the best to take pictures, what is the opinion of the author about each site, where you can find more information...

So, I've been hiking (not too hardly...) in a lot of theese sites and I can promise you that following the advices of this guide will really improve a lot your next trip in the West (North Arizona and South Utah), even if taking artistic pictures is not very important for you!

Pictures in this book are black and white so I rate this guide 4 stars (comparatively to guides with color pictures), but for people who don't care about color pictures and prefer very good information, I can rate it 5 stars without a doubt.

I sincerely hope that Laurent Martres will soon write new guides about other areas of the West of United States.

I would give it 5 stars for content, but I gave it 4 because it's a condensed combination of two of this author's photography books that I already own, with a few changes in the photographs. Those are photographing the Southwest Vols. 1 & 2. They are excellent photo guides and I have planned three trips using them. I was a little annoyed that this volune was represented to cover primarily the slot canyons of Arizona, because of the title and the cover photo. That being said....

It's a wonderful guide for the landscape photographer that hasn't been to a particular area and doesn't want to spen the entire trip driving around looking for photo ops. The directional information is amazingly accurate, down to distance between points and bumps in the road. I'm truly amazed that one person has had time to go to all of these places and document such detail.

I bought this book for a 15 day vacation in the Southwest. All of the places I visited were mentioned in the book. I like to hike and I'm an amateur photographer, so I used the book along with the "50 Best Hikes Short Hikes in Utah's National Parks". I would definitely recommend this book for anyone visiting the area. The pictures are in b&w, but great. I got lots of tips out of the book and used it extensively. My slot canyon pictures measure up to the picture on the front cover, in fact I got some really cool pictures there. For photographers - my best pictures are from the switchback going in the east entrance of Zion, Angels Landing at Zion, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley and the slot canyons.

This was once a useful book, but even when new, I would have given only 4 stars.

The publishing quality is low. While the cover is a nice glossy color shot of the then unknown Antelope Slot Canyon, the inside pages are of medium quality paper and the photos are low resolution black and white. This book is subtitled "A photographers guide ..." which is why I bought it.

The book was written in 1999. As a result, the comments are all film based, not digital. While some of that is still OK, there's much more to be said for digital workflows (for example, in digital you expose for the highlights, while in film you expose for the shadows). He talks a lot about needing a wide angle lens, but nothing about stitching together a panorama (difficult with film, automated in photoshop).

There are comments advising people to go to the compuserve photography forum for various things or to go online to the web if "you have a friend with internet access". All appropriate back then, but not now.

This book is sorely in need of update/overhaul. If you can pick it up used for not much more than the shipping, you might get an idea of where to go and when to be there. Other, more modern books are far more useful.

Beautiful cover, but every photo in the book is in black and white - not an attractive presentaton of the beauty of the canyons. The only consolation is that it is not expensive.

I've used a bit of the book and found it to be accurate. I'm glad I have it in my library!