Customer Reviews

Oceanic Wilderness

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I ended up purchasing this book because my mother had borrowed it from the local library - both she and I decided we each had to have a copy because it was so fantastic.

The book is a photographic collection of spectacular glimspes of ocean life that is a treat for the eyes. I could spend hours (and think I already have) gazing at these photos of strange and wonderous creatures. The book has minimal text, mostly limited to a caption of a sentence or two for each photo, so it is really about the pictures. And they are gorgeous. Most pages are either single full-page photos or collages of pictures themed together. The color is just amazing. Contained within the pages are not just unusual fish, but dazzling shrimp, anemones, coral, nudebranches, pygmy seahorses and plenty of other colorful creatures. I love books like this and this one is one of the best I've seen.

The book is large (and heavy!) with pages made from heavy stock paper, so it is of good quality. Definitely a candidate for the coffee table so that is within reach of guests who want to "ooh" and "ahh" over some spectacular photography. Oh, and the inside cover has a photo of coral and if you run your fingers over the page, you will feel the texture of it. Very well done book! Highly recommended!

This is a truly amazing book and Amazon offers it at a bargain price. This is a huge collection of superb photos of a diversity of ocean life. Anyone who is interested in oceans will love this book.

Roger Steene's "Oceanic Wilderness" is a fantastic book because the photos are of such high quality. There are amazing photos of many kinds of shrimps, crabs, worms and other invertebrates. I liked it because is was NOT full of endles photos taken while the diver was lying on the bottom looking up at the surface and the passing schools of fish. There are a limited number of such photos that one can look at without becoming bored.
If you've never bought a coral reef book for your library, then you must buy this one - forget the rest this is the best!

This is an outstanding collection of underwater images, mostly macro images from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. The photographic quality of the images is excellent.

It is a fascinating book. Many of the images record extremely rare animals and unusual events: all kinds of mating; anemones capturing and eating starfish; lionfish hunting in packs; fish with strange jaws gaping; nudibranchs hunting each other, etc.

One of the really nice features of this book is the way it lays out 12 or 24 different variants of a theme juxtaposed together on a page: 24 different colour variations of the same nudibranch, or 12 variants of the beautiful patterns on the tails of mantis shrimp. These displays are beautiful and fascinating.

This is a wonderful gift for a scuba diver or for anyone with an interest in the underwater world. The experience is a lot like chatting with an experienced marine biologist and photographer in the bar after a good day's diving. I've done almost a thousand dives, but while reading Steene's book I kept gasping "I didn't even know that fish did that!"

You just have to see it to believe it. It is the most amazing underwater photography I have ever seen. Fantastic!!! It's the perfect coffee table book for ocean lovers.

great book. as a scuba diver you see lots of different and strange fish and other creatures.you dont even touch on what all this book shows.its really interesting to know that you might see one of these if you know where to look.the book is put together well and the colors are great.its a good conversation book.great for the coffee table.

I wanted a set of images which would pair excellent colour and pattern with unusual forms, and had assembled many Nat Geo photos of sea creatures on my computer to use as inspiration for ceramics. I saw this book first hand and realized that it was so superior to all else I'd seen. It is similar to the Thomas Marent "Rainforest" book in the quality of the images and the small but pithy scientific text that accompanies it. It makes a wonderful resource for an artist in suggesting unusual colour combinations, patterns and forms. Mr Steene feels a real wonder about his subject and communicates that very effectively and with humility.
There is also information accompanying most photos describing the species in each picture and where the photo was taken.

This book is amazing! The content of this book is astounding...fascinating critters and how they adapt for survival. Beautiful photos! This is definitely a book you'll want to have in your collection!

This book has amazing colour photographs of all the weird and wonderful, and more normal, life-forms to be found beneath the sea. Why go extra-terrestial for sci-fi when it's all there beneath the waves? For anyone interested in marine life, this is a must.

It was everything and more. Photos are outstanding. Better than others of the same subject matter. Wealth of ideas that can be used for other projects. A lot of extremely detailed photos.