Great books, great gifts!

Fantastic article in today's Chicago Sun Times about Richard Mack and Quiet Light Publishing (where ALL items are 15% off!)...Congrats!

Evanston photographer feels call of nature in new book
BY Dave Hoekstra dhoekstra@suntimes.com Dec 17, 2010 09:45PM


Richard Mack’s ember photograph of the Missouri River at twilight gently moves off the page into your soul.

I’ve never been absorbed by a photograph in a coffee table travel book as much as this spiritual picture in The Lewis & Clark Trail: American Landscapes.

Taken from the crest of the Double Ditch Indian Site, about 30 miles north of Bismarck, N.D., it was the last shot of the Evanston resident’s first book project.

“I knew at the moment it could be the cover,” he said during a conversation at a Ukraninan Village coffee shop. “It was the end of a two-and-a-half year project. I was standing on a cliff. It was where the Mandan Indians had camped. As Lewis and Clark came by it was fall [Oct. 21, 1804]. You have to frame and wait for the right light, but in the landscape world, most of it is given to you by what’s going on in front of you. That was during the days of film, so if it came out I knew it would be stunning.”

The Lewis & Clark Trail is a 2007 companion piece to Mack’s 2009 Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes.

In October, USA Book News named the Smoky Mountains effort as “Best Book, Nature Photography 2010.”

The landscape books launched Mack’s Quiet Light publishing company to a space where he could do a third coffee table photography book.

Released last month, Their Love of Music features 117 color photographs from Libertyille-based NBC cameraman Steve Azzato. It is the first non-Mack book for the Evanston-based imprint. (All books are $65, quietlightpublishing.com.)

“Book publishing is harder than you think,” said Mack, 55. “You have to become a publisher and everything that entails. But this is the only way you make money — even though it’s not a lot. It’s like the musicians [Dave Alvin, Aaron Neville, Dave Specter and others] in the book. They do it for the love of the music, you do it for the love of the book.”

[Full article HERE]