Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky by Joel Sartore

Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky Reviews

• 
  Bob Nichols

  This is a collection of contemporary photos taken by a National Geographic Magazine photographer who lives in Nebraska. The introduction, titled “I’m from Nebraska,” starts with this: “I repeat this phrase several times a week….Most folks just shake their heads in disbelief, especially if they’re from the East Coast. ‘I flew over Nebraska once,’ they say. ‘It was brown and flat. I shut my window shade and slept.” These photos are this photographer’s tribute to his home state. At the end of his introduction, Sartore writes that “Someone once said a photographer who gets good pictures out of the Great Plains can make good pictures anywhere, mainly because there isn’t as much to shoot. Whoever said that didn’t live in Nebraska.”
  
  Favorite shots:
  
  • From the sky, a photo looking down at a B-2 (stationed at a Nebraska SAC base), looking down at a highly varied terrain; a train running through the barren badlands of northwest Nebraska.
  
  • A two-page spread of lightning in a night sky.
  
  • A photo of two trucks, facing in opposite directions, on a small road through a large field, with this comment: “Cows outnumber people. If you see another truck you often pull over and talk, which is probably not that much different from when the pioneers were headed out in covered wagons. You don’t see a whole lot of people out there so if you have the time to talk, you pull over and chat a little bit.” Sartore comments on one of his other pictures that “If there’s one thing to remember in farm country, it’s to build your house away from dirt roads.”
  
  • A photo of a rancher on a horse chasing a stray cow – this was a good technique shot – blurry, conveying movement.
  
  • A photo of a farmer, wearing a well-worn jacket, standing in front of a pile of corn with this comment from Sartore: “Farm guys tend to wear a jacket until there is literally nothing left of it. I asked this guy why he didn’t get a new jacket and all he could say was, ‘What for?’
  
  • A photo of the “Sower on top of the Nebraska State Capitol building…is a statue of a pioneer sowing the seeds that settled the West.”
  
  Some of his one-liners (“home-spun humor”) I found distracting. On “Kiss a Pig” contest, for example, he writes, “I like pigs a lot, but not that much.” Otherwise, this is a nice collection of photos and I especially was drawn to the obvious attachment he has to his home state.
  
• 
  Kelleen

  lovely pictures of Nebraska.
• 
  Gwyneth Talley

  A great now semi-older photoessay on Nebraska. It really captures the heart of "the good life." It is a larger collection of photos that were featured in national geographic magazine November 1998. Great commentary accompanies the pictures.
• 
  Mandys

  Love the photos, he was able to capture both the midwest feel and western expanse of Nebraska. Can he do a Kansas book too for those of us to the south? Please?!