Fine Art Nature Photography: Advanced Techniques and the Creative Process - Book Review

Photographer: Tony Sweet Publisher: Stackpole Books [c] July 2002, 107 pages US $19.95 / CD $32.50

Tony Sweet lives in Maryland. As a skilled jazz musician, he brings a special artistic flair to his photographs, which have been widely published in journals and have appeared in calendars, catalogues, posters, and electronic media. See his website--http://www.tonysweet.com.

As a jazz musician works out variations on familiar themes, so as photographer Tony Sweet works his own variations on the familiar images of North America's natural world. And it is, of course, in the variations that his special talent is so obvious and so well illuminated in this book. By the use of sandwich, double and timed exposures, and especially skillful use of filters, he has been able to impart a new, striking quality to the natural scene--flowers, trees, running water, classical landscape. Sometimes, mist provides an emotional quality; sometimes the dazzling colors of sunrises and sunsets enliven the whole scene with their reflections. Always, we seem to see the world around us in a fresh way.

I particularly enjoyed four of the photographs: Orange Dinghy, Prince Edward Island; Winter Tree, Pleasantville, Maryland; Spring Mist, Great Smoky Mountains National Park; and Leaf in Ice. These and so many other photographs in the book attest to Tony Sweet's technical skills and to his accurate eye for the traditional and for the unusual themes of the natural world.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Photographic Society of America, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group