Everybody likes to take great photos at scenic locales, but sometimes it's hard to know exactly where to go to get that fantastic shot that's going to end up framed over your fireplace, given as a treasured gift, or - hopefully! - sold at a show.

Well, now you don't have to worry about finding wonderful scenes on Cape Cod: We heard from a RAW friend, Arnold Kaplan, about his new guidebook to taking photos of some of the best scenes on the Cape.

What's all the more remarkable about this project is that Arnold is 96 years old! He also wrote the guidebook "How to Find and Photograph Photo Scenics In Vermont", and has been taking photos for more than 80 years. He was awarded the high honor of "Associate" (APSA) by the Photographic Society of America in 1974, and two years later, was awarded the title of "Artiste" (AFIAP) by the Photographic International de L'Art in Europe for outstanding achievement in photo education, photo exhibitions, and skill as a photographer.

He writes:

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Strobist (David Hobby) has added three books to his popular recommended reading list:

* DIY Photography's Home Studio Photography ($19.85)

* The Essential Guide to: Lighting Interiors, which Strobist says is a must-read for anyone selling their home. ($47.50)

* The Speedliter's Handbook, which Strobist describes as a long-awaited, uber-comprehensive manual aimed at Canon Speedlite users. ($30.49)

Check out the rest of Strobist's bookshelf here.

What photography books have you found the most useful?

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Paris, Hemingway wrote, is a "moveable feast" that stays with you no matter where you go. Photographer Jack Dzamba latched onto the idea and came to think of Boston in the same way. Suddenly, everywhere he looked, he saw intimations of Paris: the Cabot Building is reminiscent of Place des Voges, Genzyme headquarters at night recalls Notre Dame, and myriad hotels, restaurants, and shops, like Rouvalis Flowers on Beacon Hill (at left), exude an unmistakeable French flair. This book, with its moody black-and-white photographs of buildings and scenes, makes Dzamba's case for the link between the two great cities.

Jack Dzamba, 75 pp., $34.95

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The life of US Sen. Edward M. Kennedy gets a retelling in "Ted Kennedy: Scenes from an Epic Life," a collection of images and essays from the Globe archives. The more than 200 black-and-white photographs, most of which have never been published in book form, follow Kennedy from Hyannis to Harvard, from youth to statesman. Left, the senator read to patients at the Boston Medical Center in 2001. Simon & Schuster, 198 pp., $28.

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Dorchester photographer Eugene Richards, known for chronicling his neighborhood in the gritty 1972 black-and-white book "Dorchester Days," was at BU this week to sign his new book, "The Blue Room." In his first color project, the photographer traveled around the Midwest and South, chronicling abandoned farms, shacks, and houses - an obsession that's become strangely timely, given the home foreclosure crisis. "I had no intention of it being so prescient," he said. "It wasn't a project at the time. I was just curious."

He shot in color, he said, because he was so impressed with the cheer people tried to bring, through bright-red bedrooms and blue walls, to their bleak surroundings. "It was totally an attempt at making even a shotgun shack into a home." Richards said he saw things in the homes that made him wonder, such as a hanging wedding dress and ceremonial glasses. "Why would someone leave their wedding dress?" he asked. "Most of the pictures are questions." His next offering, "War is Personal," is a book of interviews and photographs of people affected by the war in Iraq - wounded soldiers, grieving family members - some of whom come off as heartbreaking. "That's the problem . . . people are only doing the stories on people who get up on their prosthesis and run," he said. "It's a pretty helpless feeling, because there's not much interest in the war."

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The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole
Photographs by Stuart D. Klipper
Chronicle, 175 pp., $40

"It is an otherworldly place, the edge of the Earth," writes photographer Stuart D. Klipper about the Antarctic in his new book, an oversize collection of 120 images from the region, shot in panoramic format.

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THREE WISHES: An Intimate Look at Jazz Giants Compiled and photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter Abrams Image 317 pp., illustrated, paperback $19.95

By Mark Feeney
Globe Staff

If jazz were Oz, Pannonica de Koenigswarter (1913-88) would be its Glinda the Good. She was the Jazz Baroness, a Rothschild heiress who was drawn to America after World War II by her love of the music. One look at the back-endpapers photograph of "Three Wishes," which shows her joyfully gazing at the pianist Teddy Wilson, and it's not hard to see why she crossed the ocean.

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As printed snapshots vanish, we're losing more than shoe boxes full of mementos

By Dushko Petrovich

One hundred years ago, one of Paris's richest men had a quixotic dream. Returning from a personal trip to China and Japan, the banker Albert Kahn decided to build a huge visual archive of the planet. Kahn believed that mutual misunderstanding was the source of world conflict, so in 1909, he began funding scores of photographers as they set out across five continents. By the time the Great Depression finally bankrupted him 22 years later, Kahn's intrepid operateurs had managed to document almost 50 countries, returning to France with 120 hours of film footage and 4,000 black-and-white pictures. This alone would have been a remarkable legacy, but the real jewels of the collection were printed on glass, in a full spectrum the world had never seen. The recently invented technique of the autochrome - which made portable color photography possible - meant that Kahn's emissaries could also amass a staggering total of 72,000 color plates.

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By Mark Feeney
Globe Staff

Susan Sontag took a trip once to Archer City, Texas, to visit her friend Larry McMurtry. McMurtry, who set many of his novels in the vicinity, later recalled how Sontag teased him about living in his own theme park.

She could have said something similar about herself and photography.

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The photographer's images almost always reflect himself

By Mark Feeney
Globe Staff

"Power" and "performance" have more in common than a first letter and Richard Avedon's avid interest. At their most potent (that letter again), they are all but interchangeable. Think of the hold a great actor has on an audience. Think of how well a leader plays a part before the electorate. It should come as no surprise, then, that several Avedon portraits of the same person appear in both of these very large, very expensive, and frequently problematic books, "Performance" and "Portraits of Power." The problem comes in trying to decide at what point a photographer's greatness can get in the way of his work.

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