I’ve had this book for a while now. Actually have bought it twice.

The first time was at Yellow Stone national park where I went when I was 15. I bought a copy as a souvenir for my dad who didn’t come with us on that trip. He’s the photo geek that started me on my way to being a photo geek.

Second time I bought a copy for me. I borrowed my dad’s copy so often that I just pulled the trigger and bought my own.

One author, Art Wolfe, is a well-known nature photographer. The other, Martha Hill, is a former picture editor at Audubon Magazine. They know their stuff.

The book is broken down into topics, with an explanation of that topic first. Then, through a series of Art’s images, the authors discuss application of the topics. Art writes from the point of view of a photographer and explains how the image was captured and what he was thinking when he pushed the shutter. Martha describes the images as they would be seen by a photo editor.

The mix of these two views helps break down what are absolutely stunning images into a process that I felt like I could actually do. Rather than just being amazed at the shot, there is a somewhat simplified view of how it was done.

Also important to the 15-year-old version of me was that all of the images had information on camera settings. This book helped me a lot in learning how aperture and shutter speed interact and how they affect the image. I even tried for a while to keep track of these settings as I shot. I quickly gave up as I would rather spend the time looking through the viewfinder than down at a notepad. Fortunately this was about the time that digital photography started pushing out film and all of the settings I was after was automatically saved in the EXIF metadata.

It is a bit of an old book, but the techniques of photography don’t expire. Amazon sells it new as a paperback. No Kindle version though.