So it’s been a little while since I’ve done a book review or shown one of the places I’ve been drawing inspiration from lately. Right at the beginning of the year I decided to look around amazon.com and remedy that. Looking in new places and checking out different names, I landed on this amazing book. Hasselblad has been featuring and naming Masters for years now, and teNeues has done an amazing job with the 3rd volume of the Hasselblad Masters books – Evoke.
The book features a diverse collection of photographers, photography styles, and the series really show what a professional can do with Hasselblad’s amazing equipment. I have to admit that I was originally drawn to it because I saw the front cover and wanted to see what somebody could do shooting skateboarding with a Hasselblad H4D (and I wasn’t disappointed!), but what I am also loving right now is the use of softer light sources. Having worked mainly with beauty dishes, reflectors, and harsh sources in the past, I found the use of soft light sources with the Hasselblad depth of detail to shoot subjects like portraits of animals and shots of skateboarders riding emptied pools absolutely fascinating and breathtaking. Hasselblad has absolutely outdone themselves again and I can truly see what these photographers are known as Masters.
Here are just a brief selection of some of my favorites, and while I love the shots of the skaters in terms of relevance. My favorite shots actually came from the Nature/Outdoor series when I got back to the portraits of the Gorillas. The tonal ranges and the expressions he was able to capture on these powerful and unbelievable creatures was astounding and makes me want to take photos of people in the same fashion, nevertheless a 600lb gorilla. No matter what genre of photography you’re into, at $63 on Amazon, this is a must have and a great book to add to any coffee-table collection. Enjoy, be inspired, and get out and shoot! 
