Pixiq

Books make people want to go to places, dream of things. eBooks are no different and  “Andes” from Andrew S. Gibson makes you want to travel. Or dream about it.

I never made it to Machu Picchu. When first leaving Portugal as a teenager I met a guy from Peru that was also travelling through Europe, and we kept exchanging mail for some years. There was no email or Internet back in the seventies, so people wrote letters that would travel across the world with thoughts, dreams, ideas. Although the invitation from my correspondent was up, I never made it to Peru. So I never saw Machu Picchu.

Andrew S. Gibson, that previously signed for Craft & Vision three interesting eBooks on black & white photography  - The Magic of Black and White I, II and III – and more recently The Evocative Image, could fulfil his dream of travelling to the Andes, so this eBook is about travelling there, an experience he reckons is also part of his identity. He states that the photos “cover a period of change in my life and photographic journey. The first photos are taken on film cameras, and the last on digital SLRs, as I made the transition from film to digital. They have helped me to get where I am today.”

This eBook, the sixth from The Print and the Process Series, is also a challenge to all those people that have somehow buried their dreams under the pressure of… everyday life. Andrew S. Gibson expects people to read the eBook and then get inspired to “pick up your camera and go live out a dream or two. While you’re there, talk to the locals, learn a few words of their language and listen to their stories. And don’t forget to take some amazing and beautiful photos.”

And that’s what this eBook is all about. Besides telling you stories from the trips done in the area from Argentina to south Peru, Andrew S. Gibson shares some of his practical and more philosophical experience travelling the Andes. And, as he writes, this eBook is also an answer to those people that after reading through The Magic of Black & White might have been curious about the places some of the photos are taken.

This is a book about travelling, but also about fulfilling dreams. First Andrew’s own childhood dreams about the Andes, since he saw the classic Machu Picchu photograph until he stood there and felt the magnificence, magic and mystery of the landscape. It’s also, as he states, a way to “inspire people.” Because, he continues, “Travel for many people is an unrealised dream.”

Through 45 photographs and the 75 pages of his eBook one is taken, in black & white and some variations within it, to see the people and landscape as Andrew S. Gibson saw them. On the technical side, the notes at the end explain options and reveal the numbers for all the magic, for those concerned with that aspect.

Going through the pages back and forth, one is forced to admit that some of these images are closer to us than we care to think. It’s the treatment done to them, the point of view of the photographer that makes them what they are. That’s a lesson to be learned from this eBook: the same magic might be closer to your door than you think. Some of the festivities shown are similar to those I can find close to home… and I am sure you will discover the same somewhere within the confines of the space you know. This eBook reminds me much the experience of another photographer, Bruce Percy, that has photographed in the north of Portugal, my country, and other places, with the same passion and in the same way Andrew S. Gibson does in the Andes. He saw things in my country we generally do not see the same way. So, if you come from a different place you might see things differently from those that live there. You’re bound to, I guess.

Experiences like this are important for people to understand that what they need is not necessarily a new camera or a trip abroad, but a new way to SEE things. And that may also be the richness of this new eBook from Craft & Vision: besides letting you see some fantastic images from a fellow traveller and photographer, it tells you that you should start fulfilling your dreams right outside your door, maybe discovering that back road near your house that you never used. Your “Andes” might just be there…

Andes, by Andrew S. Gibson is on sale now.For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code ANDES4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of ANDES, The Print & The Process Series for only $4 OR use the code ANDES20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST August 6th, 2011.

Have a nice reading!