The Great Wide Open book research

‘The Great Wide Open: Panoramic Photographs of the American West’ by Jennifer A. Watts and Claudia Bohn Spector

•  This book starts with an extensive photo essay and history of the American west.
• This is the first book that I’ve looked at that has a photo on front and the back which is a pleasant change. Both images are in the same format and spread across the top cover and back.
•  The colours and tones of the images work well together with the colour of the background cover which makes it the best looking book I’ve looked at so far
• This is also the first book to combine both black and white as well as colour. I think it works because it’s also part factual book, not solely an art photobook. With that said mine is only a photo book so it will stay as a single colour as it’s very difficult to make the combination work.
• One thing I didn’t expect to like is that the images appear to be place on the page without a set structure so every page is almost unique which helps to reflect the reality of the west’s landscape
• The inclusion of people is another nice touch I haven’t seen in others book so far. Even though this doesn’t affect the way I will create the book it’s an important factor to consider when photographing as we are part of the landscape.
•  I’ve seen a lot of blank pages in the previous books which is done to change the way you view the next set of images. In this book it’s only done to make way for page foldouts which is clearly a great way to display the panoramic images. Even though doing foldouts will be very very difficult to achieve with time and money being a big factor in this project, doing double or four page spreads could be achievable without eafecting my limiting factors.