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Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph | 
 enlarge | Author: Barry Thornton
Publisher: Amphoto Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $3.79
You Save: $26.16 (87%)
New (6) Used (11) from $3.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 265394
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 9.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0817438157
Dewey Decimal Number: 778.3
EAN: 9780817438159
ASIN: 0817438157
Publication Date: September 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Outstanding Mastery of B&W Photography May 4, 2008
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 and how each produces sharper or less-sharp images.
Over and over again, he demonstrates that the sharpest photos don't necessarily come from the finest-grained films or the biggest lenses or the most commonly used developer chemistry. In fact, there's a point at which the actual graininess of a film/print -- something you'd think would detract from the sharpness of the image -- actually contributes to the eye's perception of sharpness, of acuity!
This is one of the best written photography books I've ever read -- right up there with Ansel Adams' classic trilogy and the National Geographic Field Guides to Photography.
He starts each chapter with a personal event or story about his life, a place he found and photographed, a person who influenced his work. Then, he takes this narrative subject and makes it the illustration of whatever the topic of the chapter is. Beautifully written. A joy to read! And that's really saying something about a book on photographic techniques!
Of course, the book is printed on high-quality clay paper and is full of exquisite reproductions of Thornton's works. And, like a true technical book, every photo is accompanied by a blurb on the camera, lens, film, development chemistry and times, printing chemistry and times, coatings ..., really, much more information than most readers would care about. But all is meticulously documented and, as you go through the chapters, you come to understand the significance of these technical bits of data -- and the differences in the images they produce.
This is truly an outstanding book on photography, one of the very best I've read -- and I've read dozens! Yes, it's about B&W scenics, mostly. But the lessons it teaches are applicable to ALL photography and will help any photographer to improve. I highly recommend this well-written and very readable book.
Worth all five stars February 6, 2008
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 August 3, 2007
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 author's use of anecdotal stories to begin each chapter is a nice touch.
A must for anyone interested in B&W March 4, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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
The sort of book we need more of October 18, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
What a delightful book! Once you've mastered Adam's beautiful books and the other books about serious zone system work this is the sort of book you hope for. Part memoir, part advanced how-to, and part philosophy put to paper in a delightful prose style.
Not exactly for beginners -- the author assumes you know the zone system and are serious about doing your own darkroom work. It also doesn't hurt to have read Anchell's Film Developing Cookbook and the Book of Pyro but not needed. The photos in the book are beautifully printed and yet the cost is reasonable. I hope this publisher will continue in this vein.
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