Canmore, Kananaskis, and the Canadian Rockies.

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Canmore newspaper reporter and photographer Pam Doyle obviously loves the place where she lives and works and has captured its beauty and action in some remarkable shots for this collection of photographs.

Doyle’s photography excels in several areas: she has an artist’s eye when looking at the landscape; she captures the mountaintops gilded by the sunset and framed by rime-coated branches; she sees the beauty in plants gone to seed. Her most spectacular shots, however are those of people, animals, and action. Many are taken from unusual angles to tell a story. She has a wonderful image of a triathlete sliding over a muddy finish line on his belly, the photograph taken from ground level. Her picture of a helicopter rescue is shot from below the person being rescued. She captures a football player in mid-air, a bear walking a fence rail, and snowboarders catching air. She makes a water bomber dropping fire retardant look beautiful.

While the photography in the book is excellent, there are a few shortcomings in the production. Some of the photos are grainy. In the image of the bear on the fence, the bear is out of focus and the image is grainy to the point you can see purple and yellow flecks in the bear’s fur.

The other weakness in the book is in the writing, which is not exact. For example, there are two excellent images of guitar players where the band is identified, but not the musician. In reference to images of the petroglyphs, Doyle says: “No one knows how old the ancient drawings are but they could be thousands of years old.” Probably the archaeologists working for the Province of Alberta do know and some popular sources refer to the paintings having been done “more than 1000 years ago.”

However, the quality of the photography outweighs the shortcomings. While it is really aimed at the tourist trade, libraries that collect pictorial works of the Rockies will want to own this book.