I discovered this book by the German landscape photographer Helmut Hirler in Zürich. It is one of a small series of very nicely produced panoramic photography books, but this one is really quite different: black & white, mainly infrared (possibly all) panoramas of Icelandic landscapes. With a terrain as colourful as Iceland, black & white is not immediately obvious, but these really work.



The book itself is beautifully presented, a cloth bound volume held in a slipcase. Printing quality is excellent. Hirler, who seems to have quite a strong reputation in Europe, appears to have used a Linhof 617 camera, although technical details are non-existent (not that this matters). He has a feature page at Linhof, which would tend to confirm this assumption.

There are some gorgeous images in this book, especially of the many impressive Icelandic waterfalls. A particularly striking image is an ethereal, other worldly shot of the settlement at Glaumbær, and another favourite is the rivulets and falls at Hraunfossar. Everywhere his treatment is delicate, with a strong eye for composition, and without any sign of the tendency towards gloom and despondency all too often apparently beloved by germanic artists.

The only criticism I do have is that the sequence of images at Dyrhólaey is a bit dull at times, and overlong, although one photo of the sea swirling around a basalt stack is quite magical.

All in all this is a very unusual treatment of a subject that is becoming more and more popular, and it deserves a wider audience.

It doesn't seem so easy to find in the anglophile part of the Internet, but it can be found on the German Amazon site.

"Iceland" is published by Edition Panorama, ISBN 3-89823-189-5

I've just finished readding Andy Rouse's wonderful book, Life in the Wild: A Photographer's Year. This has to be one of the best nature photography books around. Andy writes almost as well as he photographs, and his style makes it far from the usual ponderous "a photographer writes" stuff but does not fall into the trap of trying to be funny at the expense of being interesting. Andy is pretty prolific - he also contributes regularly to Nature Photographers Online Magazine", writes reviews for UK online retailer Warehouse Express, writes for Practical Photographer, wins lots of prizes, runs tours, and generally seems to pretty much on the ball. I thoroughly recommend "Life in the Wild" - it takes you from Andy's back garden (almost), to the Arctic, to Africa, to India and back. A wonderful journey from which he brought back some stunning photographs. I'm sure almost any "outdoor" photographer would enjoy it.