To be honest, I started buying photo books made by fellow photographers late. I actually had no idea until I came across Julian Briard on YouTube with his What’s on my bookshelf. I participated as a photographer in the Natural Landscape Photography Awards and ordered book year one. Now I have also year 2 and 3 and these books are very beautiful, well printed and casebound. Now my bookshelf is slowly expanding with several books.

I recently discovered Kozubooks. 

I immediately ordered 4 books there that caught my first attention.  Adam Gibbs known from YouTube, Hans Strand generally known for his aerial photographs and less wellknown Martin Rak. 

The books have the same size 30 x 24 cm, 90 to 120 pages. printed on Fedrigoni Symbol Freelife Satin 170gsm, Thread Sewn and hardcover. 

About the contents of the books of these photographers,  Adam who is not familiar with him and delivers a book Quit Light full of his beloved Vancouver Island hotspots and lesser known places,  now and then we see beautiful shots from other countries such as Greenland , China and Scotland, but these are heavily undernumbered, could have been more, all three photographers also pay attention to the different seasons. 

Adam’s content is beautiful and nicely balanced, I always enjoy following his work. 

Then Hans’ work also shows a great diversity in photography included in the books, from river deltas to more intimate photos of snow and ice, his preference for Iceland and Norway is clearly visible, Hans also traveled to Greenland and Antarctica. The Rio Tinto, the most polluted river in Europe, is also included in with the red color of the pollution. This river can be found in Spain. These are two impressive books by Hans, called Beyond Landscape and Aqua. Beautiful. 

Then for myself the most unknown of these three Martin Rak, this book with the Japanese title Komorebi was the big surprise for me, his Woodlands photography is unearthly without words, if Woodlands photography already seems simple to many people, I can tell you from experience, no, it is not, and it takes a lot of time and devotion to understand nature and transform it into something that grabs you, Martin has succeeded. This beautiful book also contains plenty of work to enjoy and will often be opened like the other three books to browse, wonder and enjoy. 

I recommend everyone to follow this link and see if there is something you like: https://www.kozubooks.com 

Just this for myself because I was late with this publisher, I missed the books by Rachel Talibart and Ben Horne. I think it’s very rare and diffecult to find these books. I am most interested in landscape, woodlands. seascapes, and nature in general. 

Last thing to say if you are interested and need some inspiration order some books because these are printed in low numbers mostly 500 included special and collectors editions with signed and numbered print, don’t wait to long, otherwise you will regret it. In the meantime I preordered now ‘STILLNESS. IN MOTION’ By Sally Mason, and looking forward what the future has to offer. 

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https://www.kozubooks.com/books-new/stillness-in-motion-by-sally-mason

https://www.kozubooks.com/books-new/aqua-by-hans-strand

https://www.kozubooks.com/books-new/beyond-landscape-by-hans-strand

https://www.kozubooks.com/books-new/komorebi-by-martinrak

https://www.kozubooks.com/books-new/quiet-light-by-adam-gibbs-third-edition

Zoomland a decade. 

Zoomland a decade, 10 years at un regular times and season I visited this forest with vast avenues of beech trees. These avenues used to be the access paths to estates in this part of the forest, these days only the avenues and some narrow canals are the only witnesses of that time. The forest consists mainly of remnants of ice age sand drifts. The diversity is very varied with deciduous trees, pine trees, low bushes and open areas of grass where cattle used to graze. Fens and patches of heather can also be found. Rare and common mushrooms are found in autumn. In spring, some wildflower species can also be found including bluebells. On weekends, the forest is the domain of hiking people with their four-legged friends as well as mountain bikers. It is better to avoid weekends as a photographer. During weekdays it is very quiet generally. If you go on a weekday very early in the morning as an example around sunrise it is pleasant to be there, slowly the sun’s rays hit the water and land and warm the surface so that slowly the moisture evaporates and turns into fog. When it is spring and the leaves come back on the branches, the green is so fresh, tender and beautiful in color, the ferns also shoot out of the ground and the leaves of the beech trees turn from reddish brown to orange-brown, that you actually imagine yourself in autumn. There is much to see and photograph, when you are absorbed in photographing you forget the time and your head becomes very calm. The best thing is to let it sink in and use your senses while photographing, you are in a kind of meditative state and let the colors, shapes and also smells take you in. The forest always smells and that is specially those earthy tones. So I will now let the photos that I have taken over time in piece of the forest speak for themselves. Adjacent forests in the area are Landgoed Lievensberg and Zurenhoek as well as Groot Molenbeek also these are worth a visit if you are in the area.  

The gear:

Olympus EM-1 MK, MKII, MKIII camera body’s

OM System OM-1 

MZuiko Pro lenses 60mm macro

12-40mm f/2.8 Pro

7-14mm f/2.8 Pro

40-150mm f/2.8 Pro

300mm f/4 Pro

Leofoto tripod and Olympus photo bag

Kumana national park, Sri Lanka. part 2

Going on safari in Kumana early in the morning means the same ritual, get up early, have breakfast and then set off again on 14 km of dirt roads full of potholes. 

Like the day before, the driver arrives on time and gets a cup of tea before we leave. Today we drive in one piece to the park entrance. After all kinds of formalities we can enter the park. We soon leave the main road through the park and turn onto narrower roads that cross part of the park. There are very large areas in the park where Safari Jeeps have no access, these are the so-called quiet areas where animals and birds can stay in peace. It amazes me every time how diverse the landscape is, for to many people it all seems the same and very dry. If you look closer you also see different areas where it is more humid and mosses, mushrooms grow and sometimes special small flowers. That also brings food for insects, lizards and frogs, which in turn are eaten by birds. Then that life cycle, too, is complete. 

The spotted deer is really everywhere in the landscape, as are the wild boar and the water buffalo. Animal life goes its own way, until you hear a cry of alarm from the toque macaque or spotted deer. Then it becomes quiet and you listen to the sounds of nature. Is it the leopard trying to catch something, you hear it several times during the safari. Most of the time it is a false alarm. I can tell you that we did indeed see a leopard chase that day. The leopard was rustily hiding on a lower tree trunk with bushes in front of it. Nothing special you say, he spun around a few times on that tree trunk. 

A moment later he slowly rose from his position and began to walk. First there were a few spotted deer nearby, the leopard suddenly accelerated, with such speed that it looked like a Formula 1 car. It is incredibly fast that animal, unfortunately we could not see the rest so we did not know if the hunt was successful. It was an impressive moment… 

Until lunch it remained quiet. After lunch there was probably a phone message for the driver, a leopard had been spotted in another location. So off at full speed to the deserted village of Kumana. Once we arrived at the buildings that are still there, including a small schoolhouse, there is a leopard lying at ease at the top of the window opening, occasionally looking around and wondering who those crazy people in the jeeps are who are constantly making click, click noises. It keeps me off balance. For a year now, a male and female have been visiting this village, it is in their territory. Jeeps crowd each other for the best position for the clicks, after a while I tell the driver to drive on, I find it a bit annoying to bother these animals in their activities. Others probably think otherwise. But after all this was another beautiful day in this park. 

The gear we used:

OM-1 MK1 + EM1 -MKIII cameras

MZuiko 100-400mm f/ 5-6.3 lens

MZuiko 300mm f/4 lens

MZuiko 1.4 MC teleconverter

MZuiko 2.0 MC teleconverter