Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest [Paperback]

Wade Davis (Author), Graham Osborne (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2003

With their towering spruces and cedars, verdant groundcover and cloaks of mist, the temeperate rainforests of North American have long been a source of wonder and awe. Extending from northern California to southern Alaska, these immense and mysterious forests are home to a constellation of life that is unique on this planet.

In this magnificant photographic collection, Graham Osborne's breathtaking images depict the many guise of the rainforest--gnarled tree trunks dripping with moss, the spires of Douglas firs reaching into the sky, waterfalls tumbling over time-worn rocks, ice-encased fern fronds in winter, scarlet maple leaves littering the ground in autumn, a burst of wildflowers along a river bank in spring.

In his eloquent text, Wade Davis describes the scale and abundance of these rainforests, where redwoods reach nearly 120 meters and read cedars can be 6 metres or more across at the base. Davis also discusses the role of the rainforest in Native culture and mourns the loss of much of this ancient foest through overcutting and other shortsighted forestry practices.

Together, Davis's powerful writing and Osborne's spectular photographs provide a stunning tribute to this rare and beautiful ecosystem, as well as a compelling plea to preserve it.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890132799
• ISBN-13: 978-1890132798
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,687,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars capturing complexity, May 9, 2003

By 

Kevin M. Geraghty (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest (Paperback)

This is, quite simply, the best set of pictures of North America's west-coast maritime forests that I have come across. These forests are interesting, beautiful, and abundantly alive; they are also very hard to photograph. Through the lens they can seem messy and disordered. The unaided human eye screens out extraneous clutter, but the camera eye does not. There is order there, of course, but it is a chaotic sort of order, with many levels of order-within-disorder. Some photographers strive for excessively neat, tidy compositions, which give an entirely misleading impression of these forests; Graham, on the other hand, conveys the rhythms within the disorder. Many of the pictures are texture-rich without a sharp focus of interest. It is a style well suited to the subject. The text by Wade Davis, what there is of it, is good, but this is most definitely a picture book first.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Artistic view of temperate rainforest, December 29, 2011

By 

Kouta Räsänen (Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest (Paperback)

Davis' introductory text discuss the basics of the natural history and the destruction of these great forests. However, the biggest part of the book is dedicated to Osborne's superb photography. Pictures cover the coastal strip from northern California to British Columbia. Photos are more artistic than realistic nature photos: there are few photos which give a feeling what it is like to stand in the forest. Only 17% of the photos show forest interiors. Instead, waterfalls and streams (like the cover photo) comprise 23% of the photos. Another subject, Osborne favors, is a mess of leafless mossy maple branches and twigs. He also makes good use of the incredible depth of field of view camera, almost to the point where giant mosses in the foreground and dwarf trees in the background become mannerism. Captions give locations and mostly major species of the photos.

15 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I spy with my 'large-format' eye..., July 8, 2000

By 

Matthew Watson (Houghton, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest (Hardcover)

This book is really special. Ok I am a mate of Graham's which some might see as a bias - but this book is oustanding none the less. Osborne is a biologist (infact a botanist) by trade I believe. It simply doens't matter though, because clearly what he does best is take photos. *Very* good photos. I don't mean as in 'Oh, thats a nice photo' as my mum would say to me when from four packets of snaps I produced one relatively balanced composition. I mean as in drop-that-frying pan, walk-into-that lampost, draw droppingly good photographs. This guy has had three or four calanders of his work produced for goodness sake. The book, which, ok I admit, he gave me, is always on my coffee table, and I must confess, I have chopped up the calendars and made them into nice framed pictures.

Reasons to buy it:

i) it will enhance your life ii) it will take your breath away iii) it is pretty reasonably priced

reasons not to buy it..

i) you hate temporate rainforests...