The inimitable, haunting films of Alfred Hitchcock took place in settings, both exterior and interior, that deeply impacted our experiences of his most unforgettable works. From the enclosed spaces of Rope and Rear Window to the wide-open expanses of North by Northwest, the physical worlds inhabited by desperate characters are a crucial element in our perception of the Hitchcockian universe. As Christine Madrid French reveals in this original and indispensable book, Hitchcock's relation to the built world was informed by an intense engagement with location and architectural form-in an era marked by modernism's advance-fueled by some of the most creative midcentury designers in film. Hitchcock saw elements of the built world not just as scenic devices but as interactive areas to frame narrative exchanges. In his films, building forms also serve a sentient purpose-to capture and convey feelings, sensations, and moments that generate an emotive response from the viewer. Visualizing the contemporary built landscape allowed the director to illuminate Americans' everyday experiences as well as their own uncertain relationship with their environment and with each other. French shares several untold stories, such as the real-life suicide outside the Hotel Empire in Vertigo (which foreshadowed uncannily that film's tragic finale), and takes us to the actual buildings that served as the inspiration for Psycho's infamous Bates Motel. Her analysis of North by Northwest uncovers the Frank Lloyd Wright underpinnings for Robert Boyle's design of the modernist house from the film's celebrated Mount Rushmore sequence and ingeniously establishes the Vandamm House as the prototype of the cinematic trope of the villain's lair. She also shows how the widespread unemployment of the 1930s resulted in a surge of gifted architects transplanting their careers into the film industry. These practitioners created sets that drew from contemporary design schools of thought and referenced real structures, both modern and historic. The Architecture of Suspense is the first book to document how these great architectural minds found expression in Hitchcock's films and how the director used their talents and his own unique vision to create an enduring and evocative cinematic world.

Frank Furness (1839-1912) has remained a curiosity to architectural historians and critics, somewhere between an icon and an enigma, whose importance and impact have yet to be properly evaluated or appreciated. To some, his work pushed pattern and proportion to extremes, undermining or forcing together the historic styles he referenced in such eclectic buildings as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania Library. To others, he was merely a regional mannerist creating an eccentric personal style that had little resonance and modest influence on the future of architecture. By placing Furness in the industrial culture that supported his work, George Thomas finds a cutting-edge revolutionary who launched the beginnings of modern design, played a key part in its evolution, and whose strategies continue to affect the built world. In his sweeping reassessment of Furness as an architect of the machine age, Thomas grounds him in Philadelphia, a city led by engineers, industrialists, and businessmen who commissioned the buildings that extended modern design to Chicago, Glasgow, and Berlin. Thomas examines the multiple facets of Victorian Philadelphia's modernity, looking to its eager embrace of innovations in engineering, transportation, technology, and building, and argues that Furness, working for a particular cohort of clients, played a central role in shaping this context. His analyses of the innovative planning, formal, and structural qualities of Furness's major buildings identifies their designs as initiators of a narrative that leads to such more obviously modern figures as Louis Sullivan, William Price, Frank Lloyd Wright and eventually, the architects of the Bauhaus. Misunderstood and reviled in the traditional architectural centers of New York and Boston, Furness's projects, commissioned by the progressive industrialists of the new machine age, intentionally broke with the historical styles of the past to work in a modern way-from utilizing principles based on logistical planning to incorporating the new materials of the industrial age. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes more than eighty black-and-white and thirty color photographs that highlight the richness of his work and the originality of his design spanning more than forty years.

If you're a passionate photographer and you're ready to take your work to the next level, The Enthusiast's Guide book series was created just for you. Whether you're diving head first into a new topic or exploring a classic theme, Enthusiast's Guides are designed to help you quickly learn more about a topic or subject so that you can improve your photography. These handy books don't waste your time covering all the photography basics you already know. Instead, they build on that knowledge so you can quickly advance your photography skills. The Enthusiast's Guide to Multi-Shot Techniques: 49 Photographic Principles You Need to Know addresses what you need to know in order to shoot compelling images that require multiple exposures. Chapters are broken down into a series of numbered lessons, with each lesson providing all you need to improve your photography. In this book, which is divided into five chapters that include 49 photographic principles to help you create great images, photographer and author Alan Hess covers double exposures, high dynamic range (HDR) images, panoramas, time lapse images, focus stacking, and image stacking. Example lessons include: Using a Flash to Create Double Exposures Double Exposure Portraits Tripod, Release, and Mirror Lockup What Is Tone-Mapping? The Need to Overlap Your Panoramas Handholding for Panoramas Software Settings for Image Stacking Focus Stacking in Landscape Photography Exposure Settings for Time Lapse Doing the Math for Time Lapse Sequences Written in a friendly and approachable manner and illustrated with examples that drive home each lesson, The Enthusiast's Guide to Multi-Shot Techniques is designed to be effective and efficient, friendly and fun. Read an entire chapter at once, or read just one topic at a time. With either approach, you'll quickly learn a lot so you can head out with your camera to capture great shots.

In Make Great Photos: A Friendly Guide for Improving Your Photographs, photographer and author Alan Hess teaches you the basics of photography by breaking down the topic into easy-to-understand sections. Learn a whole range of photography basics, from photo setup to image editing. Learning the basics of photography can seem like a daunting task. At first glance, there is a whole new world of terminology to digest and tons of numbers to master. It can be confusing, frustrating, and overwhelming. It's no wonder many people set their cameras to Auto and hope for the best in whatever situation they're shooting, whether that's a child's soccer game, a birthday party, or a vacation. Unless luck strikes, the resulting images are usually not very good. But it doesn't have to be this way. Enter Make Great Photos: A Friendly Guide for Improving Your Photographs. In this book, photographer and author Alan Hess teaches you the basics of photography by breaking down the topic into its fundamental parts. In the first section of the book, Alan explains what makes a great photo in the first place, examining a selection of images and working through why each one is successful. He then dives into chapters that cover the photographic choices every photographer needs to make. These choices boil down to just three main topics: light, focus, and composition. In the second part of Make Great Photos, Alan addresses specific shooting situations--categorized into travel, sports and action, events, and people--discussing the challenges that each scenario poses and how to conquer them. Finally, you'll learn the top five basic edits you need to know to make your images pop when you share them online. At the end of chapters, there are thoughtful exercises and assignments that push you to learn and grow in your photography. These fun activities help you fully absorb the lessons throughout the book so you can head out with your camera and capture great images.

An unsung prophet of today's green movement in architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright was an innovator of eco-sensitive design generations ahead of his time. An architect and designer of far-reaching vision, it is not surprising that Frank Lloyd Wright anticipated many of the hallmarks of today's green movement. Across his work-which stands upon a philosophy Wright termed "organic"-widespread evidence is seen of a refined sensitivity to environment, to social organization as impacted by buildings, and to sustainable and sensible use of space. The desire to work and live with nature to create livable homes and cities is an ongoing theme of American architecture and planning. This book explores Wright's lessons on how climate, sustainability, sunlight, modern technology, local materials, and passive environmental controls can become the inspiration for excellent design, and highlights a selection of Wright's buildings to show how he dealt with these issues. The book is organized by the green concepts Wright used-including passive solar design and the use of thermal massing, passive berm insulation, environmentally sensitive landscaping, passive ventilation systems, passive natural light, and intelligent and artful adaptation of technology-with examples from different houses. It shows how Wright evolved certain ideas that continue to spur discussions of green architecture design today.

Frank Lloyd Wright is not only synonymous with architecture, his name is also synonymous with the American house in the twentieth century. In particular, his residential work has been the subject of continuing interest and controversy. Wright's Fallingwater (1935), the seminal masterpiece perched over a waterfall deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, is perhaps the best-known private house in the history of the world. In fact, Wright's houses-from his Prairie style Robie House (1906) in Chicago, to the Storer (1923) and Freeman (1923) houses in Los Angeles, and Taliesen West (1937) in the Arizona desert-are all touchstones of modern architecture. For the first time, all 289 extant houses are shown here in exquisite color photographs. Along with Weintraub's stunning photos and a selection of floor plans and archival images, the book includes text and essays by several leading Wright scholars. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses is an event of great importance and a major contribution to the literature on this titan of modern architecture.