Descriptions of books by Chris Howes appear below. To purchase a copy, postage included in the price, select an image from the slideshow and click on the shopping basket to the bottom left.
Images Below
by Chris Howes
Images Below is an award-winning manual of cave photography taking readers through every stage in preparing for, taking and analysing underground photographs, from the equipment used to techniques of using single and multiple flash as well as specialist techniques such as close-up, stereo, expedition and underwater photography, closing with a final section on composition and assessment: what went right, what went wrong? A particular strength of Images Below is the information it contains about lighting angles and their effects, which is just as valid for digital cameras as it was for film.
Images Below has been named a classic text on the subject.
Hardback, 18cm x 25cm, 280pp, over 480 photographs, tables and diagrams in b&w and colour, supplied with laminated bookmark. £22.50
ISBN-10: 0-9526701-1-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-9526701-1-7
The price includes p&p to a UK address. To read reviews, view pages inside or to purchase Images Below, visit the Wild Places Publishing website (link will open a new window); prices for delivery to destinations outside the UK are also available there.
To Photograph Darkness
by Chris Howes
To Photograph Darkness is the companion volume to Images Below and traces the history of underground photography and the techniques used in times past, from the catacombs of Paris to the pyramids of Egypt, from American caves to Cornish tin mines.
The result of a ten-year research project, the book is as concerned with the people as it is with their equipment. Why did they attempt the impossible, how did they obtain their supplies of ruinously expensive magnesium, how did underground photography develop to the point where it affected the world above ground?
This is a highly readable account of the use of artificial light and how flash slowly became the lighting norm. Based on original resources only, this is an important contribution to caving and photographic literature and acknowledged as a primary source. However, it is not a dry telling of fact: there is the immediacy of extensive quotations bringing forgotten eras to life and it remains a highly respected work.
Hardback, 17.5cm x 25.5cm, 352pp, 160 b&w illustrations. Published price £25; special offer £20 including p&p
ISBN-10: 0-86299-649-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-86299-649-9
To read reviews, view pages inside or to purchase To Photograph Darkness, visit the Wild Places Publishing website (link will open a new window); prices for delivery to destinations outside the UK are also available there.
Radical Sports: Caving
by Chris Howes
Caving is part of the Radical Sports series of books published by Heinemann for children from ten to early teens, for whom this hardback book is an ideal introduction to the sport. The contents include information on preparing for a trip, what to expect, clothing and equipment, parts of a cave, reading a survey, international exploration and where to find further information.
Hardback, 20cm x 27cm, 32pp, 37 illustrations. Published price £15.50; special offer £13 including p&p
ISBN-13: 978-0-431-03690-8
To read reviews, view pages inside or to purchase Radical Sports: Caving, visit the Wild Places Publishing website (link will open a new window); prices for delivery to destinations outside the UK are also available there.
The Spice of Life
by Chris Howes
Take a rich mixture of life, a gentle squeeze of evolution, add a pinch of history and flavour liberally with science. The Spice of Life is an extraordinary study of life: how it began, what affects its species – and where it is heading. This fascinating and informative book, illustrated throughout with stunning colour photography and diagrams, shows where science is taking us and how we initiate new forms of life. Here are the influences of our world, the terrors of pollution and the need for conservation.
The sheer variety of life on earth is both astonishing and bewildering. Even as we approach the year 2000, we still have little idea of how many other species share our planet, of what they are or how they live. Around 1.5 million species of animal and plan have been recorded already, but current estimates suggest the earth may be supporting 20 to 50 times this number. We hardly know what we are destroying, from the forest floor to coastal wetlands.
We are in the opening stages of a massive, global extinction crisis, with around 100 species annihilated each day by our activities. By the start of the next millennium, between 15 and 20 per cent of the world’s species will be lost, their genes gone forever. The speed of this mass extinction far outstrips that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. While we cannot predict the effect this may have on sustaining our living planet, the concepts behind the latest buzzword – biodiversity – are crucial to this understanding.
The Spice of Life is a clear, authoritative and beautiful book that describes how quickly the world is undergoing change, and how urgent our need to initiate controls. It is, above all, a story of our wonder with nature, but it is also a story of our potential fate, unless we can recognise the risks in time.
Hardback, 19.5cm x 25.5cm, 192pp, over 100 colour photographs and illustrations. Published price £25; special offer £12.50 including p&p
ISBN-13: 978-0-7137-2390-8
For more information, view pages inside and to purchase The Spice of Life, visit the Wild Places Publishing website (link will open a new window); prices for delivery to destinations outside the UK are also available there.