Review: Gorgeous, but could have used editing
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 24, 2012
Just what the title says: photographs taken by the author, featuring animals and scenic vistas on Kodiak Island, Alaska.I picked up this book free during an Amazon giveaway. The author says his subject is so spectacular it makes up for his amateur camera, and by and large, I agree with him. There are some photos that would have been improved by shifting position just a little to eliminate foreground distractions, and there are enough bear shots that the ones where the bear is quite distant or not doing anything interesting could have been culled. Only a few of the photos are captioned. Some of the photos have contrast problems. There is also minimal thematic organization, and what there is isn't consistent - a photo of the island captioned "autumn" is included in the Winter section. As usual for self-pubs, this book desperately needed a good editor, to organize the photos and eliminate the duplicates. (And cull some of the many, many bear shots.) But the composition of the photographs is quite good for an amateur, and the subject is simply gorgeous - the eagle photos and the shots of the salmon run are amazing, and the shot of a single tree in a beam of sunlight, surrounded by dark forest, is spectacular. This book definitely needs a color viewer - I looked at it both on my K4Android smartphone and K4PC. A must-have for those who enjoy travelogues or Alaska. The title is quite accurate except for the typo - there should be a comma - "Kodiak, Alaska."