A few months ago I was killing some time between the sweet morning and evening light browsing the Monte Vista Crane Festival. (The festival is really a big fair/craft show/small town event — both charming and odd at the same time). I stumbled across “Between Light and Shadow” by John Weller as I was leafing through books at the Great Sand Dunes National Park table. It stopped me in my tracks.
I can sum up this book by saying that it is easily the best book of outdoor photography that I’ve seen in the last five years. (And I’ve read, and purchased, many such photography in that time). Weller’s book has three virtues that set it apart from most of the outdoor photography books in my collection. First, he has a unique style. Rather than employing the contrasty and highly saturated only-in-sweet-light style that dominates landscape and wildlife photography, his photos are under-saturated, low contrast, even a little dark. He doesn’t rely on the “sweet light” but uses all sorts of different lighting — including, in particular, storm lighting — to great effect. Second, he lived in the dunes for several months over the space of a year. This manifests itself both in the quality of the images (you don’t get very many images this good on a week-long trip) and more importantly on Waller’s eye for the place. Finally unlike the prose in many photography books, Weller’s prose is engaging and well written.
If you like landscape photography even a little, and you don’t have this book in your library, you’re missing out.
