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April 27, 2009

The Presses are Rolling!

Today is Monday April 27, 2009 and in Singapore at CS Graphics the presses are rolling with my next book, Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty years of American Landscapes! There are many points in a process as involved as the making of a book where you stop and say to yourself – “This is pretty cool!” This is one of them. It is very cool to know that half way around the world there are people who are dedicated to making your book the best are working away on it, as they have for the past few months just to get to this point – ink on paper. So it is, underway.

Another of these moments came a few weeks ago when for the first time I wrapped the dust jacket around the dummy book they sent – a book that is the exact size and makeup of my finished book but without any printing. It is one thing to see the dust jacket on the screen as you put it all together, another to see it printed out, but the best so far is that first time you wrap the jacket around the book and put it down on a table. Voila! Your book – kind of.

So, while they toil away in Singapore printing the 220 pages and 246 images for this monograph of Great Smoky Mountains National Park maybe it is time you took advantage of our preorder pricing! You can view the book using the links below or purchase a copy for delivery in July at the advanced sales price!

And as an additional incentive if you use the Discount Coupon Code: QB01 when promted at check out we’ll give you an additional 10% off!

Preview the book: GSMNP Book

Purchase an Advanced Copy: Quiet Light Publishing

Cheers,

Richard

April 22, 2009April 22, 2009

Celebrating Earth Day

In celebration of Earth Day 2009 I am posting this photo from my upcoming book on Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This image was taken last November at Newfound Gap. This was an unusual day, in that it was crystal clear. The mountains in the background showed sharp edges – not just the fuzzy outline as most often seen. On this day the air was particularly clean because of the weather patterns. Most of the time there is a haze and visibility is limited. Often the mountains at the far side are not visible. Smog from the cities of Knoxville, Chattanooga and Atlanta to name a few tend to drift eastward and affect the air quality in the Smokies. So this earth day as we celebrate our earth we can be a bit more optimistic – maybe – because more and more cars are alternative fuels, natural gas and electric vehicles seem to be on the horizon (ever wonder why most cars in Argentina are LP Gas yet not here? Me too). We, as a country, are finally focusing our attention back on our natural environment as part of our national goals. And for this we can be thankful. But now comes the time we must all take part in that effort, by using our resources wisely, conserving energy, recycling better and all of the other things we can do as individuals which will collectively make a difference.

But it is not just air and water quality, there are many environmental issues. Another one in the Smokies is the Wooly Adelgid a beetle which has devoured the Douglas Firs on the tops of many mountains, most notably Clingman’s Dome. A few years ago it seemed every tree on the top of the mountain had succumbed to this beetle. Now some younger trees are growing once again, but they too will become victims of this beetle if we can not find a way to control or eradicate it at some point.

So, let’s celebrate our environment on this day, and once again pledge ourselves to making this physical world a better place, through our individual actions, which collectively do amount to big changes.

Happy Earth Day!

Richard

To see inside my new book Great Smoky Mountain National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes click here. See Inside the Book

Pre-Order the book: Quiet Light Publishing

March 20, 2009March 20, 2009

Pre-Order Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes

Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes

ISBN: 978-0-9753954-2-4

220 pages, 245 images, 11×13”

Quiet Light Publishing

Publisher’s Price: $60.00

Pre-Order Price: $45.00 (until June 1, 2009)

Four years ago today we released my first book, The Lewis & Clark Trail American Landscapes. As soon as you come out with your first book, the question is…so what’s your next project and when will it come out. Well, now. Kind of. You can now pre-order our second book, Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes. I have been training my lens on the park for just over thirty years so it made sense that my next book would on the park.

I began my quest to become a landscape photographer while on my first trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park back in 1974 with my future wife, Kathy. I was not then as intense about photography as I am now. I was just beginning my journey and in all honesty wanted to find the closest national park to my home in Illinois. I chose the Smokies and the love affair began – between me and the park and between my wife and I. Since then I have visited many of our national parks, but I continue to be drawn back to the beauty, diversity, and complexity of the Smokies. It is, after all, a park that offers everything: historic buildings and living history, magnificent streams and waterfalls, a variety of old-growth and new-growth forests, large fields and coves with abundant wildlife, and of course, those stunning vistas into “smoke” filled valleys.

Over thirty years, many things have changed, and many others have stayed the same. The Fraser firs on Clingmans Dome have almost been destroyed by the Balsam Wooly Adelgid, yet younger trees now crowd the understory. Portions of the Alum Cave trail were inundated by a landslide during a thunderstorm. Cades Cove is no longer farmed. Logging operations cleared much of what is today parkland. Yet to the inexperienced eye, the places where lumber companies clear-cut mountainsides in the late 1800s and early 1900s are barely perceptible, a testament to both Mother Nature’s ability to regenerate and remove the scars of mankind, and to mankind itself for having the foresight to preserve this remarkable landscape. In some cases, entire species have disappeared from the area, like the buffalo and wolves, or even from the earth entirely as is the case with the passenger pigeon. But other species have been reintroduced. Elk have been returned to Cataloochee and have migrated into other areas of the park. The synchronized fireflies have been around forever, but only in the last 15 years have they become a popular treat if you are lucky enough to catch their 10-day show in early summer.

Some of these changes are reflected in this book, whether a black and white image of an old barn taken in 1976, or one of my last shots of a sunrise as seen from Newfound Gap in November 2008. I hope you will enjoy my vision of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is a jewel in our national park system. My wish is that you will come to love, as I do, the details of the leaves, the rush of water in the streams, the colors of the landscape as it changes from season to season.

You can preview the book using the link: GSMNP Book Preview

Our release date is July 1, 2009, but pre-orders start today, at the reduced price for readers of this blog of $45.00. So order now, and put the words BLOG in the comment area to insure your discounted price. We will not charge your card until we ship your order. Readers of this blog are the first to be able to order! GSMNP Book Pre-Order

Thanks! Hope you’ll enjoy this new release! Stay tuned for more as we move forward!

Richard Mack

February 17, 2009February 22, 2009

Choosing the Cover Image

For the last few months I have been hard at work editing the images for my next book Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes. Part of the process of course is editing your work, both in deciding what images to use in the book, and then in working with each image individually to achieve the best possible printed piece. While this later part is done in Photoshop – it is much like being in the darkroom and making sure the “print” you end up with is what you had pre-visualized in the field.

I recently was on a friends blog where he talked about editing film and how there was a space of time between when you took the image and when you finally had a chance to see the image in film form after processing. His thought was that the distance in time helped you make better decisions about the images because the emotion of the day when you shot it was not as fresh. There may be something to that, especially in the day of digital photography where folks tend to edit their work even while it is still in the camera! This is never, never to be done! How can you tell what it really looks like on a 2” low resolution screen? It’s great for making sure your close on the exposure – although the histogram is better – I would never delete an image based on what I see at that point. But I digress.

Having worked on images from over a thirty year time span I have found the same emotions, or at least ones close to them come streaming back as I look at the images. I happen to be able to remember almost everything about a photograph I have taken – too bad I can’t remember things like that in real life – but it makes it easier for me to remember what I wanted the photograph to say and thereby make the correct adjustments to an image. Creating an image which comes as close as possible to what I was feeling and intended the image to look like in the first place.

The hardest part of editing is deciding which images should make the grade and be in the book. An example is the cover shot. Because of its importance it also has some additional requirements which must be met. It has to pull people in, take it off the book store shelf and make them want to open the book. Therefore, I tend to look at the covers of similar books, in this case other photographic books on Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I do this because I don’t want my book to look like theirs. I look for an image which will say something about the book but also have a more artistic bend to it. I had a working cover image for a long time from a shot I really loved. But when all was said and done it did not make the grade. Another shot seemed to work better and had a more emotional pull for those who saw all three covers (hey we started with a lot more ideas but narrowed it down to three before subjecting folks to give their opinions).

I think in some ways, my friend might have been right about distance and time in editing at least in this case. I let go of an image I really liked and had an emotional attachment to. And now that I see the new cover image I like it even better than my first choice. So what is your opinion – let me know – I’d love to hear your opinions too!

Peace,

Richard