British photographer Barry Thornton has spent a lifetime devoted to black and white photography. He shares his warehouse of technical savvy in Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph. If you have at least a working knowledge of basic photography, then you'll find this book to be full of helpful advice. Thornton has an immense amount of how-to wisdom and covers topics including focusing, lighting, tripods, printing, and much more. It is a precise book with incredible attention to detail.
The wealth of informative tips are illustrated with Thornton's photographs. Beautiful and rich landscapes so varied and full of depth that they create their own universe of monochromatic color. A stunning torrent of water crisp enough to be a cascade of crystal beads. Close-ups that feel like they were shot through a magnifying glass. Many students of photography see black and white pictures as a mere step on the way to the wonderful world of color. Thornton, on the other hand, reveres the traditions and possibilities of this medium and reveals monochromatic pictures to be a pinnacle of photography. This serious manual is a sure way to improve a burgeoning photographer's technical expertise. The book has 200 black-and-white illustrations. --J.P. Cohen
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Outstanding Mastery of B&W Photography
Barry Thornton's masterful book is all about what you have to do to take those razor-sharp, etching-clear B&W photos. And it's all about film types and film-speeds and focal lengths and tripods and skylight and development chemistry and enlargement lenses and so on. The book is full of excellent guidance, test set-ups you should be doing to confirm the focus of your camera or the film-speed settings or the alignment of your enlarger or the various developer mixes that are available for B&W chemistry... more info
Worth all five stars
As an amateur photographer striving for technical excellence, I found Barry's book and approach extremely useful. I like the way he breaks down the necessary elements of image sharpness and quality into chapters. I can digest them one at a time and try to correct my own shortcomings. The photographs are marvelous and I would have been proud to have created any of them. I only wish Barry were still alive to continue his easy style and dedication to helping photographers. May your memory be eternal!
Sharply done; might be more stars for you
The author's holy grail is sharpness, real and perceived. Type of film, type of developer, type of tripod and camera format, all slanted towards crisp and sharp photos. Nothing about tonality really: There are comparative photos only to show a difference in sharpness, except for a couple at the end showing bleaching techniques.
A good book for someone who takes architecture or landscape photos (with the requisite time to set up) and who also likes to noodle with their own developers.
The... more info
A must for anyone interested in B&W
Probably one of the best books on B&W processing I've read in the past 20 years. Too bad the first one published by B.Thornton "Elements" is no longer available. Thornton takes on one myth after another and clearly separates truth from myth in the B&W process flow in the darkroom. Just outstanding reading.... highly recommended. Vladimir
