The summary on Amazon.com reads:

“Leaving behind her childhood world of the English gentry, Evelyn Cameron began ranching on the harsh and beautiful plains of eastern Montana in 1889 with her husband, Ewen. When their initial venture–raising polo ponies–failed, Evelyn turned to glass-plate photography to help support her family. Nearly 2,000 negatives remained in a friend’s basement for 50 years after Evelyn’s death until author Donna M. Lucey tracked down the extra-ordinary collection.

Photographing Montana showcases more than 150 photographs of life in Montana from the 1890s through the 1920s. Evelyn Cameron’s work portrays vast landscapes, range horses, cattle roundups, wheat harvests, community celebrations, and wildlife of the high plains. Her vivid images convey the lonely strength of sheepherders and homesteaders and track the growth of Terry, a small town on the Yellowstone River. Her family portraits are priceless glimpses into the past, capturing the endurance, pride, and hope of those she photographed.
Through excerpts from her diaries and letters, we follow Evelyn’s transformation from a daughter of the English upper class to a resourceful ranchwoman relishing the independence and challenges of western life.”

I don’t know which I liked more: the photographs or the riveting description of the life of a pioneer woman at that time. She was certainly a remarkable woman who took on the entire burden of managing a ranch/homestead, doing all the domestic chores, embarking on a career as a professional photographer etc. This was all the more remarkable as she came from a genteel, well off British family. Her husband and ne-er do well brother certainly didn’t seem to contribute much.

I really enjoyed it.

According to Amazon:

As a young boy, Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) set about passionately recording his life in photographs, first documenting his domestic circle and later capturing the auto races, air shows, and fashionable watering holes of the Belle époque. His images have so bewitched modern viewers that even scholars have failed to see them clearly.

In Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of an Artist, Kevin Moore puts to rest the long-held myth of Lartigue as a naïve boy genius whose creations were based on instinct alone. Moore begins by exploring the milieu in which Lartigue became a photographer, examining his father’s crucial role in teaching him the latest techniques as well as the larger context of the turn-of-the-century craze for amateur photography.

Two events brought Lartigue before the public eye in America and created the Lartigue myth: In the summer of 1963, the first exhibition of Lartigue’s work in the United States was held at the Museum of Modern Art, which hailed him as an important modernist photographer, a forerunner of the art-documentary style of the 1960s. That fall, Life magazine published a feature presenting his work as an optimistic and sentimental prologue to World War I. Both treatments portrayed him as a naïve genius and Lartigue happily participated in shaping this new persona.

In Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of an Artist, Moore successfully challenges the Lartigue myth using examples from popular magazines and the cinema. Illustrated with more than fifty of Lartigue’s photographs and drawings as well as press imagery from the period, the book offers a radical reassessment of the photographer and his work.

Many photobooks feature large images, and very little text – maybe a short introductory essay if you’re lucky. This is not one of those books. It’s rather text heavy. Certainly, there are lots of photographs, but they’re mostly rather small.

I enjoyed it, but then I like a lot of text.

A couple of weeks ago I felt like going for a walk in the woods. I almost talked myself out of it. The woods would be bare, the light was wrong etc. It would have been so easy to stay home and read. But I forced myself to go to some nearby woodland. It’s called the Hardscrabble Wilderness Area.

This 235-acre green space features an undisturbed pond, and a leisurely hiking trail, suitable for moderate hikers, children, and canine companions (providing that you stick to the rather draconian dog walking rules).

Westchester County, NY is known for its beautiful trees, especially dazzling in Autumn. Blooming tulip trees, hemlocks, sassafras, red maple, and flowering dogwood make the Hardscrabble Wilderness Area a glorious day trip, hike, or picnic spot. This area also features wildflowers and is a popular destination for birdwatching.

I decided to explore an area that I hadn’t been to before. I’d noticed it before, but the problem was that I usually walked the white trail, which is quite long and the area I wanted to explore was right at the end. By the time I got there I was usually quite tired and didn’t feel like exploring further.

This time I had a brainwave. I would still walk the white trail, but in the opposite direction. That way the part I wanted to explore would be near the beginning of my walk. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before

Previous visits had been in Summer and I couldn’t see the area I was interested in too well because of the leaves. In that sense the bare trees were an advantage.

I came across a number of interesting rock outcroppings, which I thought would work well in black and white. Had a great time.