Wife For Hire


Marilyn Shank - 2001
    But when Clay meets the gorgeous city gal he's hired to play his wife, he's tempted to make this marriage real. He soon learns Gaby's as mismatched to ranch life as his ex-wife Jill. And he won't marry another woman who doesn't love the ranch, no matter how much she tempts him.Can Gaby and Clay resist the attraction pulling them together? Will they turn this farce of a marriage into the forever kind?

The Mortarmen


Michael Connelly - 2005
    The book details the fighting history of the men of the 87th Chemical Mortar Battalion. The battalion was armed with the powerful 4.2 mortars and following its landing on Utah Beach on D-Day fought in every major engagement in France, Belgium, and Germany. The 4.2 mortar battalions were the most sought after fire support units in Europe. The 87th was in combat for 326 days and the book follows each of the four companies as they participate in the Battle for Normandy, the fight for Cherbourg, the battles of Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally the crossing of the Rhine and the final victory in Germany. The book contains excepts of diaries and quotations from the men who fought in the unit and from some of the German soldiers who opposed them. It is a story of heroism, tragedy, and the triumph of soldiers fighting for freedom.

Mastering Photographic Histograms: The key to fine-tuning exposure and better photo editing.


Al Judge - 2016
     Photographic Histograms are unique to Digital Photography. Most books on the subject of Photographic Histograms only discuss the Luminosity Histogram that is projected on the LCD screens of Digital cameras. There are three other types of Histograms that you should know about -- RGB, Colors, and Color Channel.Most books also only describe the basics of how to use the Luminosity Histogram to set exposure. In this relatively short but fact filled book you will learn how histograms are created and their significance to photography.Though they did not exist in the days of film photography, they are closely related to the Exposure Zones System created by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer around 1939. Can you identify with any of these experiences? Do your eyes glaze over when people talk about histograms? Do you feel that histograms are too technical for you? Are you enthused about photography but confused by all the technical jargon? Do you wonder how professional photographers get such great images? Are you tired of well-intentioned friends giving you bad advice about photography? If you answered yes to any of these questions, end the frustration. Just scroll up and grab a copy today.

Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson


Gregory Crewdson - 2002
    A woman floats in her flooded living room, a cow appears to have fallen from the sky onto a front lawn, a gang of teenagers, seemingly hypnotized, pile up household objects for a bonfire. Created as elaborately staged tableaux, this series of images suggests the bizarre yet beautiful surrealities behind deceptively familiar suburban facades.Scheduled to accompany three simultaneous gallery exhibitions in Spring 2002 and a subsequent retrospective at Mass MoCA, this book chronicles the completion of the Twilight series, which Crewdson began in 1998. Including both production stills and the 40 finished images, all in full color, it also features an essay by Rick Moody, a novelist equally renowned for exposing the underbelly of small-town, middle-class America.

Parallax


Steven Holl - 2000
    Holl reveals his working methods in this book, part treatise, part manifesto, and part, as Holl writes, "liner notes" to fifteen of his projects. Parallax traces Holl's ideas on topics as diverse as the "chemistry of matter" and the "pressure of light," and shows how they emerge in his architectural work: "criss-crossing" at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, "duration" in the Palazzo del Cinema in Venice, "correlational programming" in the Makuhari housing in Japan. The result is a book that provides a personal tour of the work of one of the world's most esteemed architects. Parallax is designed by Michael Rock of the award-winning design firm 2x4.

The Killer from the Pecos (Louis L'Amour)


Louis L'Amour - 1998
    This classic story, complete with a full cast, stirring music and authentic sound effects, sweeps listeners back to the rough and ready days of America's frontier, where a man had to live by his wits...and his gun. Death is no stranger to Almagre, a rough boomtown in which the local cemetery, Boot Hill, is almost as crowded as the saloons. Almagre had sprung up in just under two years with a silver strike, and in that short time, it had buried three town marshals.Into this wild and bloody town rides Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie, trailing a Pecos bank robber who left two men dead. All Bowdrie has to go on is an unconvincing eyewitness description, a name scrawled on a tattered post card...and his own skills as a master tracker. But it's his skill with a gun Bowdrie will need when he looks for answers in Almagre. For the town is gripped in a stranglehold by a ruthless cattle baron named Bonelli. To bring his quarry back, Bowdrie will pin on the marshal's star to face down Bonelli and his gunmen--in a town where a badge is a death warrant.

American Prospects


Joel Sternfeld - 1987
    Finally, photography and offset printing techniques have caught up with Sternfeld's eye, and this new edition of American Prospects succeeds in presenting Sternfeld's most seminal work as it has always meant to be shown. A specially-commissioned essay by Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, considers the historical context in which Sternfeld was working and the pivotal role that American Prospects has played in the course of contemporary filmmaking and art photography. In American Prospects, a fireman shops for a pumpkin while a house burns in the background; a group of motorcyclists stop at the side of the road to take in a stunning, placid view of Bear Lake, Utah; the high-tech world headquarters of the Manville Corporation sits in picturesque Colorado, obscured by a defiant boulder; a lone basketball net stands in the desert near Lake Powell in Arizona; and a cookie-cutter suburban housing settlement rests squarely amongst rolling hills in Pendleton, Oregon. Sternfeld's photographic tour of America is a search for the truth of a country not just as it exists in a particular era but as it is in its ever-evolving essence. It is a sad poem, but also a funny and generous one, recognizing endurance, poignant beauty, and determination within its sometimes tense, often ironic juxtapositions of man and nature, technology and ruin.

Man Ray: Masters of Photography Series


Man Ray - 1973
    Schooled as a painter and designer in New York, Man Ray turned to photography after discovering the 291 Gallery and its charismatic founder, Alfred Stieglitz. As a young expatriate in Paris during the twenties and thirties, Man Ray embraced Surrealism and Dadaism, creeds that emphasized chance effects, disjunction and surprise. Tireless experimentation with technique led him to employ solarization, grain enlargement, mixed media and cameraless prints (photograms)--which he called "Rayographs." These successful manipulations for which he was dubbed "the poet of the darkroom" by Jean Cocteau, were a major contribution to twentieth-century photography. Man Ray presents 43 of the greatest images from the artist's career. The essay by Jed Perl describes the influences on Man Ray's career and his enduring contribution to photography.

Nagel: The Art of Patrick Nagel


Patrick Nagel - 1985
    More than 100 4-color plates; 25 black-and-white illustrations. Shrink-wrapped.

Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography


Michael Grecco - 2006
    His beautiful, insightful work is all around us--on movie posters, in advertising, on magazine covers, everywhere. “I delight in inspiring people,” he writes. “I want them to stop, think, and feel.” Now Grecco shares the secrets of great portraits with photographers at every level, in Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait. Sections on cameras, illumination, film and digital, creativity and conceptualization, connecting with the subject, and having a point of view, plus intriguing case studies that show “how I got that picture,” make this book a resource photographers will use again and again through the years. Whether the subject is a star or a soccer mom, Grecco shows how to add artistry, drama, wit, humor, and personality to their portrait.

Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: Essential & Advanced Techniques


Chris Meyer - 2000
    More than a step-by-step review of the features in After Effects, you will learn how the program thinks so that you can realize your own visions more quickly and efficiently. This full-color book is jammed full of tips, gotchas, and sage advice that will help you survive whatever your next project throws at you. Creating Motion Graphics 4th Edition has been heavily revised, reuniting the previous two volumes plus adding detailed coverage of new features introduced in After Effects 7 and CS3 Professional to form one massive, essential reference. The enclosed DVD-ROM contains source footage and project files for the numerous exercises which help reinforce each concept. The DVD also includes over 180 pages of additional information, including lengthy Bonus Chapters on Expressions and Effects.Authored in CS3, also included is access to a free web chapter written for CS4. * Free CS4 web chapter included with the book* Mastering animation through the use of keyframes, motion paths, and the Graph Editor* Blending imagery using alpha channels, masks, mattes, modes, and stencils* Building groups and hierarchies through parenting and nested comps* Extended coverage of type animation, paint tools and 3D space* Advanced subjects such as keying, motion tracking, expressions, and video issues* Includes over 180 PDF pages of bonus content on the DVD* Extensive coverage of the new CS3 features including the Shape and Puppet tools, Brainstorm, per-character 3D text, color management, and more!

The Art Spirit


Robert Henri - 1929
    While it embodies the entire system of his teaching, with much technical advice and critical comment for the student, it also contains inspiration for those to whom the happiness to be found through all the arts is important.No other American painter attracted such a large, intensely personal group of followers as Henri, whose death in 1929 brought to an end a life that has been completely devoted to art. He was an inspired artist and teacher who believed that everyone is vitally concerned in the happiness and wisdom to be found through the arts. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors. Among them are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wichita Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery.

50 Photo Projects: Creative Ideas To Kick Start Your Photography


Lee Frost - 2009
    Whether you want to get more from your DSLR or are simply looking for new creative avenues to explore, 50 Photo Projects shows you how to break out of your comfort zone and try something new.Packed with invaluable tips on how to create stunning photographs, Lee Frost provides the bright ideas that will reinvigorate your photography, from inspiration on what to photograph, to inventive projects with vintage, pinhole and toy cameras.

Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past


Ransom Riggs - 2012
    Each image in Talking Pictures reveals a singular, frozen moment in a person’s life, be it joyful, quiet, or steeped in sorrow. Yet the book’s unique depth comes from the writing accompanying each photo: as with the caption revealing how one seemingly random snapshot of a dancing couple captured the first dance of their 40-year marriage, each successive inscription shines like a flashbulb illuminating a photograph’s particular context and lighting up our connection to the past.

Street Logos


Tristan Manco - 2004
    Fresh coats of paint and newly pasted posters appear overnight in cities across the world. New artists, new ideas, and new tactics displace faded images in a perpetual process of renewal and metamorphosis. From Los Angeles to Barcelona, Stockholm to Tokyo, Melbourne to Milan, wall spaces are a breeding ground for graphic and typographic forms as artists unleash their daily creations.Current graffiti art is reflective of the world around it. Using new materials and techniques, its innovators are creating a language of forms and images infused with contemporary graphic design and illustration. Fluent in branding and graphic imagery, they have been replacing tags with more personal logos and shifting from typographic to iconographic forms of communication.Street Logos is a worldwide celebration of these new developments in twenty-first-century graffiti, an essential sourcebook for all art and design professionals, and a delight to everyone excited by the vitality of the street.