<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: selected photos
Review: Certainly Graham Watson is a great cycling photographer and deserves every accolade. But I purchased this book "on approval" and found when I really looked through it, many of the pictures had obscure subjects and less interesting stories. There is an honesty in that this is a review of Graham Watson's career--it does not claim to be a photo history of professional cycling. So it includes many photos less interesting to a cycling fan, but with more meaning for Graham Watson's career. Especially true in the section of black and whites taken as an amateur. Without question, the photographic and print quality are stunning, but I often found myself scratching my head wondering if a given shot could possibly be the best shot he took at that race on that day of that rider. Many of the pictures in this book really look like leftovers from an assignment. I've read European cycling magazines for years, and I feel you could get a much better selection of shots by subscribing to one of them for a year and/or picking up one of their annuals. Ironically, you hear almost exclusively in the US about Graham Watson--this book made me realize how many other great cycling photographers there must be.
Rating:
Summary: selected photos
Review: Certainly Graham Watson is a great cycling photographer and deserves every accolade. But I purchased this book "on approval" and found when I really looked through it, many of the pictures had obscure subjects and less interesting stories. There is an honesty in that this is a review of Graham Watson's career--it does not claim to be a photo history of professional cycling. So it includes many photos less interesting to a cycling fan, but with more meaning for Graham Watson's career. Especially true in the section of black and whites taken as an amateur. Without question, the photographic and print quality are stunning, but I often found myself scratching my head wondering if a given shot could possibly be the best shot he took at that race on that day of that rider. Many of the pictures in this book really look like leftovers from an assignment. I've read European cycling magazines for years, and I feel you could get a much better selection of shots by subscribing to one of them for a year and/or picking up one of their annuals. Ironically, you hear almost exclusively in the US about Graham Watson--this book made me realize how many other great cycling photographers there must be.
Rating: 
Summary: The Agony and the Ecstacy and the Beauty of It All
Review: Graham Watson is the pre-eminent photographer of professional cycling, at least in English-language publications. A few minutes of leafing through this gorgeous book is all that is necessary to explain why this is so. For two decades, he has been there, capturing all the great riders in their glorious moments of triumph as well as the bleakness that comes with physical collapse and defeat. Bicycle road racing is like no other sport in the physical demands that it makes on its participants. It requires amazing conditioning and, even more importantly, a resolve beyond anything a normal person can imagine. One need only think of Greg Lemond, coming back to win the Tour de France after almost dying from gunshot wounds; Laurent Jalabert, his face smashed in after a high-speed collision with a policeman, returning to become the number one rider in the peloton; Lance Armstrong, overcoming cancer and winning the Tour de France twice; Andy Hampsten, riding through the freezing mountains to claim the pink jersey of the Giro; the men of Paris-Roubaix, flailing through the mud and banging over the cobbles. Graham Watson was there to record all of this in his superb style, where no detail is unnoticed. And he shows us the grand arenas where these heroes ride: the villages of rural France, the jagged Alps, the green Pyrenees. Sure, everyone will tell you that this is just another professional sport, with big contracts and illegal drugs and oversized egos, but when you look at these magnificent pictures, you will see brave men riding against grand landscapes, against relentless opponents and even against themselves. Graham Watson's books (Kings of the Road, The Great Tours and so forth) seem to sell for a short time and then disappear from the market. This book contains some photos published in the other ones, but is the best collection I have seen covering so many racing highlights that I can recommend it without reservation for lovers of bike racing, good photography and Europe.
Rating:
Summary: The Agony and the Ecstacy and the Beauty of It All
Review: Graham Watson is the pre-eminent photographer of professional cycling, at least in English-language publications. A few minutes of leafing through this gorgeous book is all that is necessary to explain why this is so. For two decades, he has been there, capturing all the great riders in their glorious moments of triumph as well as the bleakness that comes with physical collapse and defeat. Bicycle road racing is like no other sport in the physical demands that it makes on its participants. It requires amazing conditioning and, even more importantly, a resolve beyond anything a normal person can imagine. One need only think of Greg Lemond, coming back to win the Tour de France after almost dying from gunshot wounds; Laurent Jalabert, his face smashed in after a high-speed collision with a policeman, returning to become the number one rider in the peloton; Lance Armstrong, overcoming cancer and winning the Tour de France twice; Andy Hampsten, riding through the freezing mountains to claim the pink jersey of the Giro; the men of Paris-Roubaix, flailing through the mud and banging over the cobbles. Graham Watson was there to record all of this in his superb style, where no detail is unnoticed. And he shows us the grand arenas where these heroes ride: the villages of rural France, the jagged Alps, the green Pyrenees. Sure, everyone will tell you that this is just another professional sport, with big contracts and illegal drugs and oversized egos, but when you look at these magnificent pictures, you will see brave men riding against grand landscapes, against relentless opponents and even against themselves. Graham Watson's books (Kings of the Road, The Great Tours and so forth) seem to sell for a short time and then disappear from the market. This book contains some photos published in the other ones, but is the best collection I have seen covering so many racing highlights that I can recommend it without reservation for lovers of bike racing, good photography and Europe.
Rating: 
Summary: When did the French stop riding bikes.
Review: I don't want to belittle Grahams work, or imply that I don't like seeing the shots of the American riders, but leaving out the other great riders of the last 20 years is a little sad. I understand this was an editing decision and not really Grahams. I'm amazed at how he can take photos that convey the athletic endeavor in addition to the excitement, determination, and grandeur of these events. If your year starts with the Race of the Flowers and ends with the Race of the Falling Leaves, these are the vignettes of imagination.
Rating:
Summary: When did the French stop riding bikes.
Review: I don't want to belittle Grahams work, or imply that I don't like seeing the shots of the American riders, but leaving out the other great riders of the last 20 years is a little sad. I understand this was an editing decision and not really Grahams. I'm amazed at how he can take photos that convey the athletic endeavor in addition to the excitement, determination, and grandeur of these events. If your year starts with the Race of the Flowers and ends with the Race of the Falling Leaves, these are the vignettes of imagination.
<< 1 >>
|
