California
Internationally acclaimed nature and wildlife photographer Art Wolfe has long had a love affair with California. Along its wild coastline, he finds iconic vistas and light playing upon water in ways that crystallize the very idea of the West Coast.Heading inland, he is drawn to the dense lushness of ancient forests, the bracing environs of an alpine lake in the Sierra Nevada, and the particular abundance of plant and animal life found only in the desert. Seeking the natural world in the great Central Valley, Art Wolfe captures stands of ancient oaks, wildflower carpets, and migratory bird populations.The natural bounty of California is a gift of diverse treasures. Mountain landscapes of ice and rock give way to cloistered old-growth forests. A commanding scene of cliff and sand and breaking waves is also, upon closer inspection, the location of highly intricate stone carvings. And the light on sand forms in Death Valley exposes nature's most sensual shapes. Art Wolfe brings a painter's eye to photography, and so his eye is as apt to focus on light and pattern as it does on grand scenery and wildlife.This is a California that is familiar -- Yosemite, Marin, the Owens Valley -- and yet remarkably new. Art Wolfe offers a personal landscape in his images of place. The result is California as it has not been seen before.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.