Owls: Our Most Charming Bird

Artist and avid ornithologist, Matt Sewell, has built a brand writing and distinctively illustrating informative, yet accessibly appealing books about birds. In Our Garden Birds and Our Songbirds, he presented two volumes, each exploring 52 favorite species from England—one bird for each week of the year. In Owls: Our Most Charming Bird, Sewell branches out beyond Great Britain and offers a world-wide compendium of various owls: multi-faceted, nocturnal birds of prey. Watercolors rendered in Pop-Art style and concise, lively prose highlight the individuality of 50 different species of owls that are indigenous to diverse regions of the world.

Sewell explores Woodland varieties like the Northern Saw-whet Owl--native to North America--which is "smaller-than-a-blackbird and fluffier-than-a-three-week-old Labrador" and has "pleading, puppy-dog eyes" etched with a permanent look of surprise. The Great Gray Owl, with a head like a "geodesic dome inhabited by a bunch of strung-out hippies," is considered a Wilderness variety that is a stealthy hunter built to survive in northern, glacial environments. The Elf Owl is one of the smallest that loves cacti and inhabits Wild West deserts of the USA and Mexico. While the Crested Owl is indigenous to tropical Central and South American climates and has eyebrows that appear like "incredible appendages" that serve to aid his camouflage efforts when pretending to be a branch.

This playful, well-conceived collection enhances--and also shatters--myths and folklores surrounding these "all-seeing, all-knowing" mysterious and imperious bird-hunters and proves fiercely entertaining and enriching in the process.

Owls: Our Most Charming Bird by Matt Sewell

Ten Speed Press, $12.99 Hardcover, 9781607748793, 128 pp

Publication Date: September 22, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/2/15), link HERE

Cristina Mittermeier: Images That Matter

The Artist's and Writer's Life

Cristina Mittermeier believes that the range of her experiences--growing up in Mexico, working as a marine biologist and biochemical engineer, raising children, writing, traveling the world, a career in conservation--all serve to enrich her photography. She says her path to the craft was "a happy accident" that has allowed her better to communicate all her "concerns, passions and hope for a better planet."

In Sublime Nature: Photographs That Awe and Inspire (see the review below), Mittermeier has collected photographs from around the world, images captured by a diverse selection of renowned nature and wildlife photographers. As founder and former president of the International League of Conservation Photographers and one of Sony's Artisans of Imagery (2008), she believes that photography can cross barriers, cultures and languages. She ardently advocates for its use as a means to encourage others to protect and preserve the beauty and natural resources of our planet.

You've spent the past 20 years focused on earthly conservation. Where does that passion come from?

I suppose it is self-preservation. Our planet's natural resources are the foundation of our livelihoods and conserving them is the only way to ensure a continued quality of life for all. Setting aside areas for protection and building boundaries that protect species and landscapes are the best tools we have. Photography informs and encourages both.

What inspired the four themes/sections of Sublime Nature: Awe, Grace, Joy, Peace?

For me, there is nothing more sublime than nature. The themes of the book evolved as I read the writings of the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, who, in 1764, made an attempt to record his thoughts on the mental state of an observer of nature in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. He held that the sublime was of three kinds: the noble, the splendid and the terrifying. These aspects gave base to the themes as the National Geographic team and I collaborated. We selected four great emotions of the human spirit as elicited by nature: hope, awe, joy and peace. We assigned a color to each emotion and then we set out to find images that fell into our themes and our color scheme in order to create a visual journey.

How did you choose which photographs to showcase in the book? What do you feel constitutes a truly great photograph?

When I look at an image, I always pose a question to myself: What happens to the character in the picture, be it a person or a bear, when nature and humanity collide? I want images to leave a door open for the viewer to articulate an answer. In the search for images for Sublime Nature, I further wondered: If I could visit that world (the image in a photograph) and be held there in its arms, could this image help me invite others inside, so that maybe they, too, could be held there? I wanted the photographs included in this book to beckon and inspire others the same way they have affected me.

In conservation photography, a great image is one that can tell a story. I am interested in images that better capture the full, complex reality of human beings and our surrounding universe.

In the end, the best images are a marriage of beautiful art, conservation substance and science. They often become iconic, and they always become a part of our collective psyche informing society about our natural world. The best images are a two-way street between me, the viewer and the rest of the world.

A late afternoon bath turns into a joyful water fight in the waters of the Iriri River, Brazil. (photo: Cristina Mittermeier)

Have innovations in photography changed your craft?

Innovations (like better sensors, faster frame rates, smarter cameras) can only help photographers become more effective. But the hard work of understanding our universe and aiming our cameras at subjects that really matter will not change with technology.

Which is your photographic medium of choice--digital or film?

I love digital. I did my time on film, and I cannot think of a single reason to ever shoot it again. It is the photographer, not the camera, not the film, that makes the picture.

How do you think images such as those in Sublime Nature can save the environment, animals and landscapes?

I hope that, at the end of my career, people know I made and presented images that mattered. Photographs, especially when they are iconic, make us pause, reflect and internalize information in a way like no other medium. Images require no translation, and photography has the power to inform, encourage and inspire the protection of our planet's natural and cultural treasures. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (3/28/14), click HERE

Sublime Nature: Photographs That Awe & Inspire

Sublime Nature is the first volume in a new series from the National Geographic Society seeking to publish books that confirm a commitment to "the conservation of our extraordinary planet's natural resources." In this first installment, Cristina Mittermeier, a marine biologist turned photographer, has assembled a breathtaking collection of stunning images from an array of wildlife and environmental photographers who capture the beauty of nature in a way she hopes will "awaken broad-based social consciousness."

The book is divided into four parts: Awe, Grace, Joy and Peace. Each section begins with a brief poetic, personal introduction by Mittermeier. Along the way, inspirational quotes from renowned writers, naturalists, scientists and artists serve the four themes. The accompanying 100-plus scenic images from various locales range from landscapes, wildlife, flowers, waterways, local natives and natural wonders of the world. There are penguins atop dramatic icebergs in Antarctica, striking waves of sand on arid Moroccan dunes, a fisherman casting his line into a coral inlet in Indonesia, a graceful ballet of bottlenose dolphins in Peru and a dusky gloom trapped amid rocky chambers in Arizona.

Mittermeier is committed and passionate in her belief that photography can influence the fate of nature. The visuals she has selected are lively and thought-provoking in subject matter—brilliant compositions bursting with vivid color and light. The impact of the photographs paired with profound words is bound to encourage others to find meaning, appreciation and a greater respect for a vulnerable planet facing continued wildlife extinction, climate change and diminishing natural resources.

Sublime Nature: Photographs That Awe and Inspire by Cristina Mittermeier

National Geographic Society,  $35.00 hardcover, 9781426213014 , 224 pp

Publication Date: March 25, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (3/28/14), click HERE

Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton

In Saltscapes, Cris Benton, retired professor of architecture at UC Berkeley, has focused his camera upon the southern end of San Francisco's historic South Bay—the site of salt evaporation ponds that are being restored to tidal wetlands and marshes after a century of industrial salt production. For ten years, Benton researched and was intrigued by the history of these landscapes right in his own backyard. He hiked the salt-pond levees and took photographs of the region. Sky reflections from the earthbound perspective, however, did not do justice to his attempts to capture the confluence of snowy-looking white salt, marsh grass and mudflats. Therefore, Benton began to experiment and decided to attach his camera to a kite.

The book details, in fascinating depth, how he developed his gear and the various prototypes that led him to successfully master Kite Aerial Photography (KAP). Mounting his camera to a radio-controlled kite, Benton has photographed the region from heights up to three hundred feet. This unique, bird's eye vantage point produces distinctive images that peer straight down into the water and the land to reveal unexpected, breathtaking color saturations, textures, shapes, details and form that go beyond what the eye can discern from the ground.

In the foreword of the book, image comparisons are made to the abstract expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko and Benton, himself, pays homage to the artist. This collection of stark, striking photographs visually engage spatial sensibilities and illustrate exciting, fresh perspectives of a largely unexplored American territory in restorative transformation.

Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton by Cris Benton

Heyday, $50.00, Hardcover, 9781597142472 , 176 pp

Publication Date: December 1, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (12/17/13), click HERE