Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks, Third Expanded Edition
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Give the gift of the National Parks with this beautiful coffee table book: the most complete photography book about all the 63 US National Parks, and the only one with location notes for each photograph. Winner of 12 national and international awards. Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks pays tribute to the millions of acres of protected wilderness and historical heritage in all our country's 63 national parks, including the four designated since the award-winning first edition was published in 2016 and became an instant classic, among them New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia and White Sands National Park in New Mexico. Luong, who was honored with the National Parks Conservation Association's Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks and featured in Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan's documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea, is the most prolific photographer working in the national parks and the only one to have made large-format photographs in each of them. In an odyssey that spanned more than a quarter-century and 300 visits, Luong focused his lenses on iconic landscapes and rarely seen remote views, presenting his journey in this sumptuous array of more than 600 breathtaking images. Accompanying the collection of scenic masterpieces is a guide that includes maps of each park, as well as extended captions that detail where and how the photographs were made. Designed to inspire visitors to connect with the parks and invite photographers to re-create these landscapes, the guide also provides anecdotal observations that give context to the pictures and convey the sheer scope of Luong's extraordinary odyssey. Including a foreword by author and documentary filmmaker Dayton Duncan, Treasured Lands is a rich visual tour of the U.S. National Parks and an invaluable guide from a photographer who hiked-or paddled, dived, skied, snowshoed, and climbed-each park, shooting in all kinds of terrain, in all seasons, and at all times of the day. QT Luong's timeless gallery of the nation's most revered landscapes beckons to nature lovers, armchair travelers, and photography enthusiasts alike, keeping America's natural wonders within reach. Read more
Publisher : Terra Galleria Press
Publication date : May 24, 2022
Edition : 3rd
Language : English
Print length : 492 pages
ISBN-10 : 1733576010
ISBN-13 : 17
Item Weight : 8.05 pounds
Dimensions : 12.5 x 2 x 10 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #63,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in Individual Photographer Essays #25 in Landscape Photography #44 in Travel Pictorial Reference Books
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Top Amazon Reviews
Short version: As someone who loves the National Parks, and loves photography, I find this book stunning and inspiring. Easily the best National Park photography book that I've seen (and I've seen quite a few). Long version: This is a 450-page book containing about 500 photographs selected from an individual photographer's work for two decades in all 59 U.S. National Parks. There are also brief notes about each Park, plus brief but useful details aimed specifically at photographers: some of the author's favorite photgraphy spots, details about where each photograph was taken and at what time of day, and a discussion of each Park's seasons from a photographic standpoint, among others. The author (QT Luong) is the first person to have photographed all 59 of America's National Parks using a large-format camera. He did so traveling mostly alone, self-funded, and with the same kind of access to the Parks as any regular visitor. The book is a declaration of love for the Parks (using images instead of big words), a photographic travel essay, and an inspiration for readers to go see these magnificent places for themselves (and bring their cameras). Just to clarify, this is not (and makes no attempt to be) a guidebook or a photography manual. Brief disclosure: I've never met QT Luong, and have no vested interest whatsoever in this book. I bought the book (at the regular amazon price) because I had followed and appreciated the author's photography website, terragalleria.com, for many years. I was also fascinated by Ken Burns' epic 12-hour documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea", which featured QT Luong as one of its few living characters. I work in a field unrelated to photography or to the National Parks, but I love the Parks, visit them whenever I can, and I am an avid amateur photographer. Below are a few pros and cons to consider if you're undecided about this book. Pros: 1. The vast majority of the book's approximately 500 photographs are stunning. The few that are not outright stunning are still very, very good. 2. It is clear that a lot of attention went not only into the choice of photographs, but also in the way they are arranged on the page, so that photographs presented together are thematically coherent and their combination is aesthetically pleasing. 3. The book covers all 59 (as of 2016) U.S. National Parks. 4. The writing is measured, modest and to the point. 5. There is sufficient information about each photograph to inspire and even help prospective National Park visitors who are interested in photography, but without unnecessary technical details. 6. Last, but not least, the book looks and feels really well made. The paper is thick and glossy, with virtually the same quality as dedicated brand-name photo paper, including great detail and colors. The binding seems solid (but I've handled the book gently; not sure how well it would take abuse). The dust jacket is thick, has a premium feel (including embossed lettering) and folds back on itself along the upper and lower edges of the book, which I think makes it more resistant to tears/wrinkles (though I have not purposely tested this). The following may be viewed as Cons by some, but in my opinion are not: 1. The balance between images and text in this book may not please everyone, but in my opinion it is just right. For each Park there is one introductory page (text + photo), 3 to 7 pages of pure photography (1 to 4 photos per page and no text at all, except for the page numbers), and 2 to 3 pages of information (including thumbnails of all photographs in the preceding section, with information about each, and a few additional photos). 2. The book includes very little technical detail about the photographs. The author may mention use of a wide or telephoto lens, but almost never other shooting parameters or exact model of lens, camera, or film (yes, film). For most photographs, it is also not clear whether they were taken using a large-format camera, 35 mm film camera, or digital camera. I personally see this as a good thing. 3. Some people may decry the lack of GPS/geotagging information, but let's not forget that this book is the result of two decades of work, and geotagging nature photographs is a relatively recent concept. For each Park, the book does include a map with drop pins showing approximately where each photograph was taken. The map is small and not very detailed, but if one combines the map with the text description, then the location of each photograph becomes quite clear (in most cases). 4. The book is made in China, but in all likelihood this is part of the reason why you can buy an excellent-quality, 7 pound, >450 page photography book for less than $40. Cons (I'm being really picky here): 1. For each Park, the book lists year established, surface area in square miles, rank in size, annual number of visits, and rank in popularity. I think the details about visitation could have been ommitted. This book is timeless- why include information that will be outdated in a few years? 2. For the number of visits, a small footnote on page 22 clarifies that the numbers shown are "the average of recreational visits recorded by the National Park Service for each Park over the decade 2005–2014". I'm not sure how many people will see that footnote. Without it, it is really strange to read, for instance, that the annual number of visits to Yosemite is 3,649,924. There's a level of detail in that number that I find frankly uninformative, and even distracting. I think some rounding algorithm would have helped (e.g. anual number of visits in Yosemite ~3,650,000). Of course, the rounding algorithm would have had to be adapted to the Park's popularity, with less rounding for less visited Parks. 3. The maps are not graphically consistent across all Parks.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2016 by Ian Alexander
If you are going to own or gift only one book about the National Parks, this is the one. Treasured Lands offers a blend of gorgeous photographs, extensive geographic coverage, and practical information not found in any other book. Even at the full price of $65 it would represent an exceptional value for a 480-page coffee-table book produced to the highest standards. I own a shelf of books about the National Parks, and this is by far the best in my collection. Read on to understand why. There are more great pictures than in any other book, generally printed big on a full page. They are amazing as you'd expect from a celebrated photographer who has worked for the last quarter-century in the National Parks, visiting each of them five times on average to capture the best light and seasons. They are carefully selected to let you discover not only the diversity of the National Parks as a whole, but also the diversity within each of the National Parks. The author illustrates the lesser-known National Parks, often passed over in other books, with at least five pictures. He introduces each National Park very well by pointing out the natural history facts that make it unique. A few coffee-table books in my collection contain equally great photography, but after feeling inspired to visit the places pictured, I often found myself perplexed about their locations. Some of those books do not even include captions. By contrast, for each picture, Treasured Lands provides at least a paragraph identifying the location and how to get there, and also frequently explains how the author got the picture - like following a master photographer and looking behind his shoulder. This is a feature that I have not seen in any other National Park book. There is more first-hand information than in any other photography book. Given how unobtrusive the text is, at first I didn’t realize its extent, which is the equal of a guidebook. Treasured Lands rewards a careful repeated reading if you are inclined so, but otherwise you could spend hours just thumbing through the amazing pictures. I have only two (small) reservations. First, the information is printed with a tiny font hard on my aging eyes. Second, it is so useful for planning that I would have loved to take it along on my trips, but Treasured Lands being such a lavish coffee-table book, I am not sure I want to toss it in my truck! Finally, the value. I do not understand how an obscure publisher can offer the book at this price, since they do not have the economies of scale of the likes of National Geographic - and by the way, Treasured Lands easily outclasses any of the National Geographic efforts on this topic. You may think it is expensive, but when compared with the other books I own, Treasured Lands offers at least twice as much contents, of higher quality, for not much more money. I would have paid twice as much for what is the definitive work on the National Parks. It is a massive tome, almost 8 lbs, gorgeously designed and printed. All my friends were mightily impressed. I plan to give out many this holiday!
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Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2019 by Germaine Krull
I wrote a review of “Treasured Lands” and then decided that I had been so long-winded that almost nobody would have the patience to read it all. Accordingly, I decided to submit both a Short Version and a Long Version of my review – and even the Long Version has been cut almost in half. FWIW, Amazon delivered my copy only a few days ago, so there is undoubtedly much more that I have yet to discover. The Short Version: STUNNING – BUY IT! Buy a copy for yourself and buy copies as gifts! The Long Version: This is a stunning book. “Treasured Lands” is not just a stunning book of photographs of scenery within our National Parks; it is a book that I find stunning from every aspect from which I have looked at it. The photography is excellent, and the author has spent a large part of his adult life taking superb photos in every single National Park of the United States. Here you will find images of sweeping scenery and of intimate locations that you might walk past if you were not paying attention. Here you will find images from locations in parks like Yellowstone that are on the bucket lists of many, many people, and images from locations like the National Park of American Samoa that distance means most of us will never visit. Here you will find images from iconic locations within familiar parks, and images from almost unknown jewel-like scenes within the same parks. But “Treasured Lands” is much more than that. The author has provided maps to help you find the locations within the parks from which the photos were taken, and descriptions of how to get to those locations. Many photos talk about the time of day that was needed to capture the image. None of this is unique, and I have books of excellent photos from places like Yosemite that do the same thing in even greater depth – for THAT specific park. But none of those books have done the same thing for *every single National Park in the United States*! This book is 457 pages long, which allows the author to cover the parks in greater depth than any of the other multi-park books that I have seen. But all of this still does not begin to do justice to “Treasured Lands”. The text that accompanies the photos also provides the reader with a rich experience in other regards. If you want to know more about a given park, information is there - in clear and useful text. With text that ranges from the eco-system of Olympia to the geology of Bryce, you will end up with no excuse for saying, “I’m not sure if I will find anything interesting other than pretty scenery if I go to that particular park”. Another area that I found stunning was the sheer value of the book. I have other books of landscape and other photography that are a fraction the size of “Treasured Lands”, for which I paid comparable prices – or more – and felt were good value. The content is superb, and the production values of the book are excellent. FWIW, I am putting my money where my mouth is – I have already ordered three additional copies from the author – all autographed. My comments above probably make me sound like one of the “fanboys” about which snide remarks are frequently made on the web these days. I am 76 years old (and a fan of the National Parks), so I don’t think that any form of the word “boy” other than “old” is applicable to me. However, I will add that when I look at the glowing endorsement on the book cover that Ken Burns has given QT Luong and “Treasured Lands”, I feel comfortable in believing that my opinion still has validity.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2016 by E. T. Suter
The photos in this book are as diverse and wonderful as the National Parks themselves. Their technical quality is unsurpassed since Mr. Luong deployed a large format film camera for many of them. He also adopted digital photography early for night photos not seen in older books about the National Parks. In addition to shooting the standard landmarks of each National Park, he has spent much time in the backcountry to explore lesser known areas. The result is a selection of photos, each of them wonderfully composed, that tell a complete story for each of the National Parks. For such a well-photographed subject, Mr. Luong makes exciting and surprising photos with a sense of discovery. A good example of how he saw the parks with fresh eyes is provided by his treatment of Yosemite National Park. In most other National Parks books, Yosemite National Park is reduced to Yosemite Valley, but Treasured Lands devotes more than a full spread to the sights in the rest of this vast park. More to the point, there are many photos of Yosemite Valley by great photographers, yet Mr. Luong manages to create four photos that I’ve never seen anywhere else: Cathedral Rocks framed by the Ribbon Amphitheater, a lunar rainbow from a spot where Lower and Upper Yosemite Falls are in alignment, a rising moon over a forest fire next to Half-Dome - an image that likely will never been reproduced, and a backlit view of Upper Yosemite Falls from an adventurous location. On the other hand, when he shoots a classic tourist location like Tunnel View, he patiently waits for years for special weather conditions to shoot what has maybe become the most iconic color photo of that location. Visually, the book is more than a mere collection of great photos. The designer has handled with aplomb the challenge of presenting the large number of photos needed to give a complete picture of the National Parks. He has clearly separated the text from the photos, in order not to distract from the later, giving this hefty tome a clear "art book" look. Many photos are reproduced big, on a full page. When several photos are placed together on a page, they are paired in a way that they harmonize and enrich each other via visual echoes. See for instance the vertical stripes that unify the disparate subjects on pages 90-91. When you combine the intrinsic beauty of the National Parks, the epic extent of the effort to shoot them in such a complete way, the beauty and originality of Mr Luong's artistic vision, and the great design, you get one of the most remarkable books of nature photography ever published.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2019 by Francesca Woodman
Format: Hardcover
If you are a photographer and/or love the U.S. National Parks, you must buy this book. The author, QT Luong, has achieved the remarkable feat of photographing all of the U.S. National Parks with large format photography equipment, the heavy stuff that photographers like Ansel Adams used to drag around with them to capture high resolution photos that could be printed in large sizes prior to the days of digital photography. In recent years since digital photography could produce images comparable to large format, Luong has also added digital to his arsenal. But when a new national park is designated, Luong pulls out the large format equipment and travels to photograph the park with it. According to a video presentation he made about this book, about half the photographs in this book are large format and half are digital. Luong didn't just make a quick trip to every park to take some photos so he could tick that park off the list on the way to doing them all. He researched to find the best places in the parks and visited many of them in multiple seasons. And he didn't just visit the parks. Prior to taking up photography in the early 90's, Luong was a mountaineer. He has hiked and carried his heavy camera equipment to remote mountain peaks and slept overnight to capture sunrises, learned scuba diving and bought digital camera equipment with waterproof housing to photograph coral reefs and fish underwater, canoed and taken sea planes to photograph the remote parks that are scattered across many islands. He took photographs at night. He visited and photographed all the national parks (at the time) on his own dime in about 10 years before he gave up his regular day job and became a full time professional photographer. While the images in this book (which was self published by Luong) are superb and allow us to see great photography of a lot of national parks most of us will never see in person, there is another reason to buy this book if you're a photographer and/or somebody who likes to visit national parks. Luong has created an e-book that contains all the images in the book along with his notes on them and where they were taken on a map of each park. So you can see where each photo was taken, what time of year, what time of day, etc. For an extra $5 after you buy this book, you can download the e-book to your phone or tablet, use it for planning trips to the national parks, and have it with you during your visits. It is a fantastic resource and an incredible bargain. As an aside, Luong has a blog that is also a great resource for photographers. As someone who has been a pretty serious amateur photographer for over a decade and is mostly self taught, I have probably 3 dozen or more books by photographers, collections of photography, etc. This book, Treasured Lands, is my favorite of all of them. The companion e-book is among the best trip planning resources for photographers that I own, alongside books like the Photographing the Southwest series of books by Laurent Martres' and a few others.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2023 by D. Pugh
Format: Hardcover
Fabulous book! The photos are beautiful; the paper quality is very good, and the highlights are pithy and very helpful. I am ordering a second one as a gift for a park-loving friend.
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2026 by Molly
Where to start? It seems redundant to review this book after the New York Times declared it the best work to come out of the NPS Centennial and wrote a more detailed review than I plan to. I'm just going to say this. This is a book you can thumb through every single day for the rest of your life, planning where your future trips will go and remembering fondly past trips. Though I could see from the description when I ordered it that it was over 450 pages, I wasn't prepared for the heft of the thing when it came. This is a massive 450+ work, and yet it feels small when reading it because, it turns out, 59 is a lot of parks. I know some of the parks well (I live in Yosemite) and enjoyed seeing my favorite places and some out-of-the-way places in those parks. But for me, the stunning images of parks I haven't visited or, in several cases, even heard of made me dream of future trips. The images are gorgeous, which is no surprise - I first saw QT Luong's large-format images 20 years ago and knew what to expect there. But the descriptions of the parks are also well-done. In the end, this is one of the few books for which I own two copies - one signed by QT Luong and one for "everyday" use. The other one, by the way, is the Stephen Botti, Complete Flora of Yosemite. I have a beaten up "everyday" copy of that and a copy still in the shrink wrap. Given the economics of publishing in our era, it's rare for sumptuous books like Luong or Botti to find a publisher at all and when they do, they tend to go out of print and never be available again, so I like to have a copy for posterity.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2017 by yosemiteexplorer
Format: Hardcover
For a few years I have been wanting to purchase a book devoted to our national parks, and I have browsed a number of good ones in various bookshops/gift shops. A few months ago I found a thoughtful review on the subject on Amazon. The review was for a book other than this one, and though that book was felt to be good, the reviewer considered Treasured Lands to be substantially better in content and overall value. Intrigued, I looked into the matter further and ultimately decided to order the book. I am glad I made that decision. This is definitely the best book on the subject I have encountered. The photographs are excellent, the information on the parks is useful, and the scope of the book is impressive. We recently enjoyed a trip to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon, in part inspired by this book. We look forward to using this book to inspire and inform future adventures in our wonderful national parks. I commend the author for all of the effort and love that went into this book in a process that spanned many years. The downloadable PDF/app is also a nice feature to allow us to access relevant content even while exploring the parks themselves. For owners of the physical book, the PDF/app is very cheap (I believe it was $5).
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Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2023 by Anonymous