Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I received this book today from Amazon and will be returning it tomorrow. The author has assembled some stunning pertraits and surrounded them with a trite attempt at an essay explaining pow to pose people for portraits. Mr. Hurter doesn't carry it off. The portraits are often beautiful, but there is no explanation of how they were acheived. The captions are often ridiculous and read like a museum curator's strained attempt at reading meaning into a canvas of paint drippings. The narrative is ofen just plain silly as when Hurter speaks of image stablization lenses that have very limited application to portraiture. Statements such as "Most photographers agree that a pleasant, happy expression is considered more desirable than a big smile" aren't worth paying money for. In sum, the serious student of photographic portraiture will find nothing of value in this book. Jerry