If there has ever been a perfect merger of wildlife photography and fine art this is it.

There is a reason that Nick Brandt’s first book, On This Earth:  Photographs from East Africa is one of the most popular photography books of the decade.  The moment you open A Shadow Falls you will understand why.  Words almost fail to describe the images in this book and there can be no doubt that wildlife art will never be looked at in the same way again.

A Shadow Falls features some of the most emotionally evocative images of African wildlife you could ever wish to see and the book draws you into the world as Nick Brandt sees it.  Through 58 tritone plates, Nick tells the story of a vanishing world which heightens the emotive nature of the images even more, if that is at all possible. Whether you love monochrome image or whether you love African wildlife, this book is an absolute must and one that will be enjoyed forever.

I bought my copy of A Shadow Falls two days ago and have probably paged through the book a hundred times.  It is beautiful and makes you appreciate the fragile nature of the subjects and that the shadow that is falling over the earth is us.  Humans.

Emotive.  Inspirational.  Visually brilliant.  If you are looking for an absolutely amazing gift, for yourself or anybody else,  you cannot go wrong with this book.  It is truly majestic and as good as it gets.

You can get your copy of A Shadow Falls from Amazon by clicking here.  I got my copy from Exclusive Books and was quite surprised that Kalahari.net does not have it on their site yet.  You can however get a copy of Nick Brandt’s previous book, On This Earth:  Photographs from East Africa, from Kalahari.net by clicking here.  If anybody wants to send me a copy as an early Xmas gift that would be great ( ) alternatively I will no doubt be getting my own copy of this one soon.

More soon.

Gerry

The Chameleon  got it’s name from the greek word ‘khamaileon’ which literally means ‘lion on the ground’.  Nice for a catchy blog title but not the point.

We found this chameleon crossing the road and since he was ‘on the ground’, so was I.  Flat on the ground.  All to try and get to eye level which, considering his eye level was about 2 inches of the floor, called for some interesting horizontal maneuvering on my part. (Hmm, could also have called this post ‘Lyin’ on the Ground’  :) )  Ultimately I got my Sigma 10-20mm in place as the colorful reptile came straight at me.  I shot off quite a few frames, some of which I will post later, from different angles but this specific image caught my eye.  Not really sure why but here are a few thoughts.

• It looks like the chameleon is ‘running’ away, screaming, from his shadow.  Use your imagination!
• The negative space on the right of the chameleon, which he is moving away from, is quite strong yet balanced by the shadow.
• The visual mass of the image is definitely in favor of the right hand side of the image.  Or is it?  Does the shadow help?
• Has the line of the tail got anything to do with it?

For some reason I keep on going back to the shadow.  It is quite natural for our gaze to drift towards areas of contrast and in this image the shadow is very dark in comparison to the rest of the image.  If the shadow was not present your gaze would probably have drifted towards the chameleon’s mouth, for the same reason.  Using contrast like this to move your viewer’s gaze around the frame is a great way to tell your visual story.

In this instance however I was, while rolling around in the dirt, purely trying to get the chameleon in focus and in an interesting pose so the shadow caught me slightly unaware when I saw it on my laptop screen.  I like it, but still confused as to why exactly…

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this one.  Does the shadow work?  Why or why not

Until later!

Gerry