Our California

I ordered this book as a wedding present for a German friend who had spent 6 weeks with me when she was a teenager. She is a nature lover, and this is one of the few books on California that I could find that consisted mostly of photos of the natural beauties of the state and also didn't contain great quantities of text...it included many of the places my friend had seen when she was here.

Our California presents an outstanding color photographic album of many of California's finest visual sites. The book is ideal for anyone who has never been to California before and wants to check out the potential scenery in advance. If you are a California lover and want a coffee table book, you should probably look for something built around Ansel Adams's work or any of the other great California photographers. I especially enjoyed the nature photography and the many scenes bathed in dawn or sunset light. The book abounds in redwood groves, poppy fields, rocky shorelines, foggy hills, thundering water, snow-capped peaks, still lakes, deserts, wildlife, vineyards, city scenes, ghost towns, festivals, architecture from the Mission days through today and amusement parks. The photography is routinely splendid. The quality of the paper and the page sizes are such that high quality reproductions are possible. Over 85 percent of the images are beautifully printed. The rest are either too dark or overexposed. That ratio is pretty good for a book in this price range. Although unaccompanied by a text, the captions are detailed enough to help you locate where you can see the sights captured here. Many of these views can only be seen at certain times of the year. Be sure to check a travel guide for the best times to go. For example, San Francisco is foggy and cold most days in the summer and rainy in the winter. September and October are better times to be there. The waterfalls in Yosemite are at their peak in the spring. I was disappointed to see that there were no whale photographs in the book. You can see grey whales migrating in the spring and fall and there are boats to take you out to see them.