GO EPIC!
"I love the example-based approach rooted in the beautiful photographs! Dr. E transports you to each magnificent scene and shares all his settings and thoughts, while inviting you to consider your own creative compositions! It is like a ‘workshop in a book’ transporting you to dozens of epic locations!" -Elizabeth L.
"As a professional photographer, this book has given me EPIC insights and inspiration! The beautiful photographs themselves are enough to inspire us to get out there, and Dr. E's subtle and informed insights--his "philosophy" of photography and friendly voice--will be a companion on future photography outings. While every professional will gain from the usually reticent Dr. E's approach laid bare herein, I would also call this book 'a beginner's guide to advanced landscape photography.' I wish I could have spent a couple hours with it when I was just learning the art and craft of landscape photography. And even now, it has given me new insights and inspiration." --L Taylor
There exist many wonderful books on landscape photography, but this one invites the reader to aim higher via EPIC Landscape Photography. “Story is the soul of the work,” Aristotle reminds us, and as the soul alone is immortal, we must shoot for the soul so as to create lasting art. Dr. E invites the photographer to see themselves as a participant in a greater story, as they seek to photograph the soul of the landscape so as to exalt its poetry—its Epic Spirit--in art.
Sergio Leone stated that the greatest writer of Westerns was Homer, and is it no wonder then, that the landscape photography in his film The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly was most Epic? It is because he was shooting for the grand, Homeric soul, and so too shall we.
Epic: adjective: noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
The book teaches far more by showing than by merely telling. Not only are detailed settings shared for over seventy of Dr. E’s fine art photographs, but so are Dr. E's detailed thoughts and philosophies on "getting the shot."
FROM THE BOOK:
Don’t just visit Ansel Adam’s Wilderness and walk the John Muir Trail, but also read their epic words exalting the land as The Range of Light. Read the noble mentors’ words so as to better tap into the higher powers of the creative spirit, as you find a thousand thousand words and photographic compositions of your own—not only from without, but from deep within your soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously stated: “As to the methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
Yes! I will share the principles! By sharing not only the settings, but what I was thinking for each shot, I will strive to teach you the principles of photography, after which you will be able to hone your own particular methods as you develop your artistic vision and voice.
We must grasp the principles of light in this art of photo-graphy which literally means “light-writing.” And too, we must learn to see the world through our own personal lens, shaping and exalting the light via our own voice.
Shoot for the Soul: Prologue to an Epic Philosophy of Landscape Photography:
The key to “epic” landscape photography is losing oneself in the story of the land. See yourself as not just a photographer, but as the “Man with No Name” in a John Ford or Sergio Leone Western, riding into town as a stranger in a magnificently strange land. See yourself as an ancient Navajo sage entering Antelope Canyon’s sacred temples in a state of humble reverence. When shooting a seascape, become Captain Ahab pursuing the While Whale—Moby Dick. . .
See you out there in the Epic Landscape!
