Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Heaven Hardcover – 11 May 2010

A very good book woth great photography

If you're a SI swimwear issue fan, this book is awesome. Iooss is definitely a photography icon.Not sure if I'm allowed to put external links in a review, but I reviewed this book on my blog:[...]

Es ist ein toller Bildband in guter Qualität. So manche Anregung zum Nachfotografieren ist dabai. Einziges Manko meiner Ansicht nach, sind die alten Fotos aus vergangenen Jahren. Aber ich kann damit leben und deren Anzahl hält sich in Grenzen. Die Fotokulissen sind traumhaft, eben swimsuit-mäßig!

Over time I have collected or received five of these SI Swimsuit books and figured I would write a review that gave my personal opinion about them. The books are: Knockouts, In The Paint, Heaven, Portfolio Explorer Edition, and the huge Swimsuit 50-years of Beautiful. All are good books, no real lemons in the group, so depends on what you are looking for. Here is my list of favorites in order with any pro's and cons:1) Knockouts - Large, square shaped book with high quality images with a wide range of models from the 60's to 2000's. I like the size, quality of pages and print, very little text and and obviously most important the actual images are well printed and usually all on one page so not broken up by the spine.. Overall I thought the feel of a book showing beautiful women in swimwear in exotic locations was strongest in this one.2) 50-Years of Beautiful - A close second, huge book, which gives huge images. A nice history of the SI Swimsuit edition is provided as well as images of the covers and shots of all the models that have ever appeared. Nicely made with good photo paper. Limited but some text. One pet peeve, some full page images have text on the page, which annoys me. Knockout never puts text onto one of the image, but uses boarders or previous page to tell about the image. Still a strong book worth owning and strongest about the history of the SI swimsuit edition over the decades.3)Portfolio The Explorers Edition - Overall nice book, I like how it breaks down the book by individual model (about 10 pages each) No writing on the images and large sized pages. Only "downside" is that it only covers a small number of models (maybe there are other similar editions with some of the older models from 80's-90's as these are mostly newer models). Photography is great, some text but just a bit about each model to start off the section of the book with her portfolio.4) Heaven - Another good sized book with large images. Breaks the sections down by "location visited" for the particular photo shoot. This one would have ranked higher except I was annoyed how many two page photos there were. These two page photos are obviously large and when they worked were nice, but too often for my taste the binding ran right through an important part of the image. Besides all the locations being a tropical paradise, I would have liked just a bit more of the images to show off something unique about each site.5 ) In the Paint - This is more of a focused book. Its smaller and shorter than the others. Its not bad, its exactly what you would expect, a lot of pages of the newer SI models painted to look like in swimsuits or other cloths. Sounds the sexiest and there is obviously much to "see" in this book vs some of the other, but overall I got a bit bored by the end. Still, like all the books, its well made with high quality standards and some of the individual painted ideas are very very cool.Hope that helps anyone looking to pick up any of these books.

Wow, a real miss from Sports Illustrated.I'm a real fan of those Sports Illustrated Swimsuit books and magazines, I own them all.That one is simply terrible! I'm returning it fast.Cover (most of it) and inside cover pink! May I remind SI that men are reading or should I say looking at your books.The pictures are terrible, not clear, most of them are blurred. A lot of cut and paste was also done with unrealistic results.You see ugly pigmentations on plenty of pictures.Sensuality is totally absent. With the number of rolls your photographers took you could have done a lot better.Unfortunately, this book doesn't fullfill what it was intended to.To conclude you must have understand that I hated it!Don't spend a dime on it, it would be a waste.Waiting for your usual books next year!An unhappy fan

Certainly one of the best of the best collections of swimsuit beauties and far away places by this remarkable photographer.