Coast from the Air

Many people have been glued to the major television series Coast, and it's not hard to see why. This fascinating series has reminded many people in Great Britain of something many of us had forgotten -- just how beautiful and breathtaking the coastal areas of the United Kingdom really are. For some viewers, the series has been a revelation -- and many people now believe that these coastal areas are in fact the greatest natural glories the country has offer. Neil Oliver's large and impressive book Coast from the Air has set itself a difficult task: to conjure up in single, frozen images the same exhilarating experience that the TV films can offer. And it's a measure of the success of this book that this is largely what is accomplished. All the panoramic images here -- often spread over two sizeable pages -- managed to conjure everything from the first century Broch of Gurness -- one of the best preserved pre-Viking sites in Scotland -- to the sheer cliffs plunging into the North Sea at Dunnottar Castle (the latter is particularly good at encapsulating just what makes the book so enjoyable -- as well as the natural beauty of the land mass, the photography captures the play of light on the waves: equally important, of course, as part of the experience). Oliver, an archaeologist and writer, has excavated areas ranging from the earliest prehistoric sites in Scotland through to those of the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War and, later, the battlefields of the Second World War in England and France. He is the perfect guide to the topographical riches contained herein, and while the book may be light on text for some tastes, Neil Oliver is clearly well aware that the images speak for themselves -- and eloquently. --Barry Forshaw

View other editions of Coast from the Air.
View books by Neil Oliver.

The good, the bad and the mediocre - Rated
I got this book because I have in mind to do a similar project on New Zealand and this book provides lessons, in particular:
1. Summer is not a good time to take aerial photos because of the amount of haze and dust in the atmosphere.
2. If you have no choice about (1) then at least use a uv filter
3. Telephoto lenses will make the focus soft
4. Don't take photos with incident sun angles, keep the sun behind you.
The photos in the book are a mix of good, bad and medocre with enough good to cancel the effect of the bad, leaving the whole thing mediocre. The book design is mediocre too; the use of a band of lime green across every page spread doesn't work and the obliteraton of part of the photo introducing each new chapter with a double thick version of this band is bad. A thin line in a natural darker green would have been OK. "Artistic" white space seems inevitable among pictorial book designers, but there is just too much of it, and I would have used different fonts. The TV series has not yet made it here, hopefully it will be a lot better than this book.

Very Poor Photos - Rated
I received this at Christmas but was badly disappointed by the shockingly poor quality photographs, which were low resolution and sometimes blurred. You need to check the book first at a high street book shop before buying online, in case you too are disappointed by the poor resolution of the photographs.