I blogged a few weeks back of having made the incredible find of a signed copy of Annie Leibovitz’s new book At Work in a little bookshop last month. This week I got around to reading it, and, even with pretty high expectations, I was completely blown away. If you have even a passing interest in the process of photography you should read this book. Annie Leibovitz has unquestionably taken some of the most iconic and historic pictures of the past 40 years, and in this book she opens up and talks about the circumstances and the stories behind photos that are so iconic, they’re almost taken for granted. She doesn’t go into tons of technical detail about shutter speeds and light readings. There is talk of the technical process, but it is more about general approach and overall process.

The book spans the entirety of her career, from the resignation of Richard Nixon, to her absolutely gorgeous portraits of the Queen of England in 2007. But there is so much more than just the images here. it’s the only photo book I’ve ever studied where the text is probably of more interest than the photos. Most of the pictures I’ve seen and studied before. But the back story she gives is incredibly valuable material. She talks about how ideas and collaborations developed. How she won or didn’t win a person’s confidence. How she executed the pictures. The book is incredibly dense. She covers 197 photos in just 216 pages, text, photos and all. She moves quickly from story to story and crams a lot of information into very few words. I have no doubt I’ll read this again 2 or 3 times before I put it up on the shelf.

Over the years I’ve read a few interviews with Leibovitz and she’s always so direct, It’s been difficult for me to tell if she is incredibly self-involved and egomaniacal, or incredibly down-to-earth and practical. This book really illuminates just how much she falls into the latter category. None of the stories seem romanticized. Some are certainly quite funny, and many are rather heartbreaking. Through it all, though Leibovitiz’s tone is incredibly even and pragmatic. She’s not afraid to talk of exactly how a photo came to be, whose ideas were whose, how prepared or unprepared she was, and when she feels like she succeeded and when she feels like she failed. She is clearly a working photographer, and however confident she is, she doesn’t seem to glorify herself or her work in the least. You realize just how pragmatic she is when she tells the story of photographing the Bush administration in 2001. They wanted to shoot in the Oval office, but Annie refused. She’d shot in there several times before and the huge line of windows behind the desk causes a lot of lighting problems. Plus she didn’t like the way Bush had decorated it.

And it’s when you read stories like that, that you realize that you’re reading the story of someone who has had a truly incredible life. She was there when Apollo 17 launched for America’s final trip to the moon. She was there when Nixon resigned. She’s been on the road with The Rolling Stones, The Clinton and Obama Presidential campaigns, and the OJ Simpson trial. She’s photographed humanity at its worst in Sarajevo and Rwanda. She’s photographed nearly every cultural icon of the past half-century, and she’s earned every opportunity she’s had. Reading this book is quite simply getting a glimpse of genius at work.

Nikon announced the D300s this week, an upgrade to their very popular D300, and it includes video capability along the lines of the D90 and the Canon 5D Mark II. I have to admit In the right hands these cameras make compelling cases for video on an SLR.

Here are a couple of amazing videos shot with the new D300s.

There seems to be hang in this video at about 1:58. The first time I saw it, the video worked perfectly, but it’s been having some kind of issue since. Still, the work up to 1:58 is pretty cool.