Book Review: Encounter, By David Yarrow

Featuring 87 monochrome images of wildlife and people from some of the harshest and most inaccessible landscapes on Earth, Encounter is the stunning new photography collection by David Yarrow.

Renowned for his preparation, perseverance and patience in the field, Yarrow – recently shortlisted for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award 2013 – maintains that in an era of information overload, there is “no room for the banal”.

Years in the making, Encounter demonstrates the lengths that Yarrow will go to in pursuit of the purest image possible and, through a compelling narrative, it illustrates the challenges of shooting in some of the most desolate corners of the world. Challenges that include: overcoming the fierce dry heat of East Africa; frostbite; having to talk down a brown bear unexpectedly encountered in the middle of Alaska; and enduring 30 hours in the water to capture the moment a great white shark caught its prey.

Encounter proves on every page that photography is about active nature rather than passive observation, such as the image above where a lioness gets up close.

The book is published in affiliation with conservation charity Tusk, which will benefit from a percentage of sales.