Book Reviews

Excellent West Virginia waterfall guide book!!

Awesome waterfall Guide Book!! Beautiful photos and excellent descriptions, GPS locations and maps!! Well done!! Thank you Rick for your effort to develop a comprehensive West Virginia waterfall book.

Susan Moser

Hi Rick. I received my

Hi Rick. I received my book yesterday. I love it so much! Thank you for the autograph! We are planning a trip to West Virginia in April and we cannot wait! Thank you for this beautiful book.

Victoria

Truly beautiful work.

Truly beautiful work. and love the GPS coordinates. If I can’t see the waterfalls in person, this is the next best thing!

Savannah

Clear Directions

An excellent book. A must have for anyone looking for a resource for the waterfalls of West Virginia. Clear directions and GPS coordinates. I highly recommend purchasing this book!

Jackie H. Buchanan

Love the book.

Love the book. GPS is a godsend. I’m looking forward to chasing all these falls. In particular, I appreciated the section on the Gauley River NRA. The south bank was awesome.

John

Melser Bonilla

Reposted from my Facebook Page offered by Melser Bonilla who, I would like to say is a magnificent photographer.

About three years ago, I started to run out of places or things to photograph. I was beginning to get bored with photography. When researching photography locations in Virginia, I came across Rick Hartigan.

Rick has a wealth of information about waterfalls in WV with GPS coordinates. His book comes in handy anytime I want to photograph waterfalls in WV.

His book is not just for photographers but for all who are in search of a small adventure. I’ve never met Rick, but I credit him for reviving that thirst for adventure, making photography exciting again, and making me fall in love with West Virginia.

All my West Virginia Waterfall photos that I have posted and the ones that I have yet to edit have been a direct result of Rick’s Website and Book. Thanks, Rick Hartigan

#westvirginia #waterfallwednesday #waterfalls #waterfall #bookstagram #photographer #photographychallenge #photography #vaphotographer #landscapephotography #getoutside #outdoors

If you live in WV and love waterfalls…………

If you live in WV and love waterfalls a must over 200 sights use gaps coordinates and you are there. First time I used it I just open the car door and I was there.

M. Lopez

A fine guide for your own WV waterfalls expeditions.

Rick Hartigan, the photographer/author of West Virginia Waterfalls, is the organizer of the Cincinnati-based Ohio Valley Camera Club and administrator of several nature-related websites. Privately printed in 2017, this reflects his years of travel experience in and around the Mountain State.
This publication contains viii pages of introductory material (table of contents, author’s presentation and preface); 111 pages of text on waterfalls; 11 final pages of useful resources, credits, photography tips and an index.
The entry for each water feature consists of GPS coordinates, clear practical directions which should assist with finding the location, along with sound advice regarding accessibility(i.e. whether the falls or cascade is visible for roadside viewing or requires any hiking for any distance and/or scrambling down hillsides) and, usually, a fine color photo.
Much of the book’s material is drawn from accumulated material to be found on the author’s West Virginia Waterfalls website (http://www.wvwaterfalls.com/index.php), where the reader will find additional falls entries, more images for some locations, and further commentary. It is suggested that the book and the website be consulted together, along with many helpful links to be found at the latter.
As Rick says in the preface, the book’s primary concerns is “about finding and getting to locations” of waterfalls in West Virginia, the “what and the where” rather than photographic information such as lighting situations and camera settings (although this is not infrequently encountered along the way). There are lots of tips about driving through the rough spots. While the author advises that this is not a book concentrating on aspects of taking pictures of the water, the final section on photographic technique for capturing waterfalls is a generally valuable and, again, based on what he has found to be successful and satisfying. Anyone who has traveled with Rick knows that this book is a labor of love based on first-hand experience and that it is produced with his deep passion and enthusiasm for the outdoors in general and water features in particular.
The easygoing and colloquial style of prose is authentically Rick; if you know him and especially if you have traveled with him, you’ll almost be able to hear him speaking this text.
This book is highly recommended as both a useful assistant on the road but is also enjoyable in itself thanks to the superb images. While most of this reviewer’s waterfall expeditions with Rick have been to other areas – in fact, that’s my 2010 photo of him at Spruce Flats in the Smokies on the back cover – one special trip on the road with him to the New River region makes this something of a souvenir. Using this volume as a tour guide – one of its main purposes – will save the reader a lot of wasted time and frustration. I am happy to see Rick’s hard work in West Virginia made available in this book.

Dan Pater

I am very pleased with this book!

As an avid waterfaller, I am very pleased with this book. I’ve taken several trips to West Virginia to visit waterfalls. The directions in this guide are clear and I love having waypoints to use for off-trail hiking. The maps are a great addition and make it easy to plan trips. The beautiful photographs have me planning more trips, particularly as there are several waterfalls in this guide that I missed on my last trips. This is an excellent guide to West Virginia waterfalls.

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