Each image alone exposes a nugget of our planet's magnificence; the totality of the collection goes beyond our imagination. Turning the pages, viewers are struck by the richness of life on Earth. One photograph is more awe-inspiring than the next--chosen by veteran National Geographic Magazine photo editors to present what is visually incredible. The photographs are drawn from the popular "Visions of Earth" feature in the magazine, (rated #1 by readers), from our own storied Image Collection, and from renowned photographers throughout the world, many never-before published.Enthralling images fill the book in a gallery of stunning landscapes, fascinating people, amazing animals, and unexpected glimpses of the usual and unusual. Puffins' beaks signal breeding time in Norway and a speckled emperor moth in South Africa diverts predators with an illusion. An elephant takes a morning dip in India's Andaman Sea while Siamese crocodiles race in Thailand and surfers in Australia relish a perfect day. Monks in Bhutan run to dinner and a little girl in red stands out among white-robed women in an Indonesian mosque. Spanish youth decked in colorful, oversize papier-mâché heads celebrate a festival in Catalonia and a flower of flame blooms from a man's kerosene-filled mouth in a Sikh celebration in India.Around the globe, amazing moments are captured in time, from a spray of flash frozen petal fragments in California to a truck show of chrome-covered and gleaming neon rigs half the world away in Japan. Visions of Earth is a welcome escape from the news of natural disasters, conflict, political upheaval, and social unrest that fills our lives. The book delights our senses, ignites our emotions, and renews our optimism, showcasing the many ways that our world is a marvel to behold and a privilege to call home.

    

    

    Includes interviews with fifty-nine waitresses in forty-three towns and cities.

    “Photography Demystified—Your Guide to Understanding Photography, Gaining Creative Control and Taking Amazing Photographs!” has been designed to resolve your frustrations and photography difficulties. This book will give you the tools, education and practical applications needed to understand how to take great pictures! PLUS, a section entirely dedicated to assignments has been included! Video tutorials are also available at no charge! http://mckaylive.com/bonus/Along with my wife Ally, I own McKay Photography Academy. Leading hundreds of photographic tours around the world, I have taught over twelve thousand people just like you how to excel in photography. Having earned my Master of Photography and Photographic Craftsmen degrees from Professional Photographers of America, the leading photography organization in the world, I have been a full time professional photographer for over twenty nine years and am passionate about teaching others how to achieve great results in their photography. My motivation is to see that everyone can enjoy photography and take the frustration out of the process!Beginning photographers, camera buffs, photo enthusiast, and many others who struggle with understanding photography concepts, exposure, and their camera manuals have already experienced my proven methods of teaching beginner’s photography. This book will do the same for you!•Terry L from Santa Cruz, CA says: “Taking someone off automatic settings to manual settings can be daunting at times. Fortunately, I have had the experience of learning from David McKay. David has taken me further into the world of photography than I could have ever imagined.”•Keith W from Austin, TX writes: “David is one of those rare individuals that combine passion, extensive knowledge and a laid-back style in teaching photography. What else can I say; it is refreshing to learn from someone this talented.” •Steve of Steve Scurich Photography in Santa Barbara,CA states: “The ability to take decades of complex photography knowledge and boil it down into concepts that are clear, understandable and easy to implement, is David’s gift to the world. Personally, I am forever grateful for the inspiration and encouragement he’s given me.”•Denise Mann from San Antonio, TX says: “David McKay is passionate about photography and equally as passionate about teaching it to those eager to learn.”•Jeff G from Sacramento CA says: “David McKay is a great photographer—not every photographer can be a great educator, David is! David is able to take complicated topics and break them down to something easy to digest and practical to implement—you are inspired to go out and use what you just learned!”•Kara from San Jose, CA writes: “You can’t help but to feel his love for photography and his passion for teaching.

    They are bold, brazen, fierce—and sexy. They aren’t known for following rules, they are known for doing—and wearing—whatever they want. Tomboy captures the tomboy’s style, her je ne sais quoi, her wardrobe, and most importantly, her spirit. Throughout the twentieth century, the mass marketing of gender stereotypes meant tomboys cropped up against the odds, trends, and ads. As menswear-inspired fashions for women have exploded into the mainstream under the helm of designers and stylists ranging from J.Crew to Rag & Bone to Boy by Band of Outsiders, acceptance of both the word tomboy and the women associated with its edge has been set into play. But a tomboy is not just about style—tomboys are measured in equal parts wardrobe and spirit.A visual history that chronicles the past eighty years of women who blur the line between masculinity and femininity, Tomboy explores the evolution of the style and its icons. Vivid commentary illuminates the tomboy’s history and captures a diversity of women who are bound together by their inherent ability to seamlessly blend a rugged sensibility with classic, understated elegance.

    One of the country's foremost nature photographers offers closeup techniques and covers exposure, equipment and composition along with special equipments and lenses.

    Prince was a legend of artistry and individuality, a man who lived for his music and positioned himself outside the confines of the recording industry. News of his untimely passing shocked and shattered his millions of fans. Filled with rare and carefully curated photos of Prince from all stages of his career, this visually stunning unofficial music biography tells Prince s story through conversations that journalist (and Prince fanatic) Mobeen Azhar had with the people who knew him best friends, musicians, artists, and members of his inner circle many speaking out about the great artist for the first time. These firsthand accounts paint a more personal picture of Prince than any seen before, and, along with the images, pay homage to the originality, musical genius, glamour, and sex appeal that Prince embodied."

    In this illuminating, in-depth Q & A, “America’s storyteller” lets readers in on his philosophical approach to understanding our nation’s past, as well as a little family secret for overcoming your fears.Tom Roston is a veteran journalist who began his career at The Nation and Vanity Fair magazines, before working at Premiere magazine as a senior editor. He writes a regular blog about nonfiction filmmaking on PBS.org and he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. He lives with his wife and their two daughters in New York City. Cover design by Adil Dara.

    Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 28-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront of Chinese artists' battle for creative freedom. Like his champion Ai Weiwei, Ren was controversial in his homeland and wildly popular in the rest of the world. He said, -I don't really view my work as taboo, because I don't think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don't intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.- Why? Because his models, friends, and increasingly, fans, are naked, often outdoors, high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing, stacked like building blocks, heads wrapped in octopi, body cavities sprouting phone cords and flowers, whatever enters his mind at the moment. He denies his intentions are sexual, and there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images: the urine, the insertions, the many, many erections. In a 2013 interview VICE magazine asked, -there are a lot of dicks ... do you just like dicks?- Ren responded, -It's not just dicks I'm interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way.- True though that may be, the penises Ren photographed are not just fresh and vivid, but unusually large, making one wonder just where he met his friends. In the same piece, Hang also stated, -Gender isn't important when I'm taking pictures, it only matters to me when I'm having sex, - making him a pioneer of gender inclusiveness. Young fans still eagerly flock to his website, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. His photographs, all produced on film, have been the subject of over 20 solo and 70 group shows in his brief six-year career, in cities as disparate as Tokyo, Athens, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vienna, and yes, even Beijing. He self-published 16 monographs, in tiny print runs, that now sell for up to $600. TASCHEN's Ren Hang is his only international collection, covering his entire career, with well-loved favorites and many never-before-seen photos of men, women, Beijing, and those many, many erections. We take solace remembering Ren's joy when he first held the book, shared by his long-time partner Jiaqi, featured on the cover.Text in English, French, and German

    Known for his photography, his teaching, and his ability to connect with photographers, Zack has long had an "open door" approach to discussing his career-the ups and the downs-and in so doing has provided a straightforward and candid look inside the industry. By consistently showing great work and offering helpful advice, he has built a large, loyal readership that looks to him for guidance in navigating the currents of a difficult and dynamic industry. Now, Zack finds yet another way to cut through the noise and offer truly valuable information to those struggling to make their way through the twists and turns of an ever-changing landscape.In Photography Q&A, Zack answers over 100 questions that he fielded directly from the public. These are questions that range across all aspects of the photo industry: gear, marketing, street photography, vision, pricing, branding, light, models, work/life balance, technical advice, and much more. From how to "put yourself out there" and start to get jobs, to how to get paid for those jobs when the client is slow to cut the check-and everything in between- Photography Q&A answers many of the pressing questions that photographers are asking, but until now have not been addressed. The book also includes intermittent "Visual Intermission" sections-where Zack discusses individual images that were milestones in his development as a photographer-as well as worksheets on topics such as pricing and costs that help photographers to "know their numbers."With all this material, and with insightful, honest answers that come straight from Zack's experience as a photographer who has seen it all (or at least a lot of it), Photography Q&A is an essential resource for any photographer looking for the real answers to the real questions in the industry today.

    The book unveils the journey of the personal philosophy of its makers, compelling a nation to think.

    Its goal is to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Each volume is introduced by a well-known student of the featured photographer. In this book, Larry Fink--well-known for his layered pictures in social settings--explores composing photographs and improvising within a scene to create images with both feeling and meaning. Through words and photographs, he reveals insight into his own practice and discusses a wide range of creative issues, from connecting with the subject in front of the lens to shaping a vision that is authentic. Photographer Lisa Kereszi, a student of Larry Fink, provides the introduction.Larry Fink (born 1941) has been a professor at Yale University School of Art; Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture; Parsons the New School for Design; and Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Currently, he is a tenured professor of photography at Bard College. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States, including solo exhibitions at Light Gallery, New York; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.Lisa Kereszi is a photographer and educator. She is now the director of undergraduate studies at the Yale University School of Art, where she has taught since 2004. She has published five books, including "Fun and Games" and "Joe's Junk Yard." Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Brooklyn Museum, and has appeared in the "New Yorker," "Harper's" and the "New York Times Magazine."

    His extraordinary career, which took him from humble beginnings as an apprentice on Savile Row to the creative directorship of his own global brand, is a story of hard work, ambition and visionary brilliance. Leading photographers such as Mario Testino and Corinne Day photographed his stunning designs for Vogue, and through them Alexander McQueen's career is presented - from the controversy of his early shows to the elegiac perfection of his last - with a particular emphasis on the evolution of his signature style: immaculate tailoring, slashed fabric, historical references and beauty in the macabre. The book shows that McQueen's own ambition was fully realised: 'I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting so that, when I'm dead and gone, people will know that the Twenty-first Century was started by Alexander McQueen'. Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades.Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.

    Once you own a flash, though, you'll have a lot of questions about how to get it to create the light you need—questions about camera and flash settings, questions about direction, quality, and quantity of light. And in addition to knowing how to use your flash, you need to know which modifiers and triggers you might need, and you need to learn use them quickly.That’s why this book was created: to quickly get you to the technique, the setting, or exactly the right thing you need to do right now to improve your work.Here’s how it works: When you need to know how to do a particular thing, you turn to the chapter where it would be found, find the thing you need to do (it’s easy, each page covers just one single topic), and Scott tells you exactly how to do it just like he was sitting there beside you, using the same casual style as if he were telling a friend. That way, you get back to shooting fast. This isn’t a book of theory, full of confusing jargon and detailed multi-step concepts. This is a book on which button to click, which setting to use, and exactly how and when to use it, so you’re never “stuck” wondering how to use your flash again. This will be your “go to” book that sits within reach any time you’re shooting with flash, and you are going to love having this type of help right at your fingertips.