Natural beauty: new coffee-table book displays Indiana's diverse landscapes.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: AROUND INDIANA - Wild & Scenic Indiana - Book Review

RICH CLARK KNOWS A little about natural beauty--before moving to Indianapolis nearly two decades ago, he lived amid the ski slopes of Colorado. His migration to the Hoosier state had to do with family matters and freelance photography opportunities, and he certainly wasn't expecting to find stunning landscapes.

But stunning landscapes he found, all over Indiana. Evidence of his discoveries includes the 240 photographs splashed across 168 pages of "Wild & Scenic Indiana," a new coffeetable book from Browntrout Publishers, the world's largest calendar publisher and a significant producer of books that cover everything from nature photography to outhouse portraits to dog humor. Clark's photography is accompanied by descriptive text from Scott Russell Sanders, an Indiana University English professor and prolific Hoosier author.

"For the last 17 years since moving here, I've been out hitting all corners of the state, shooting 4-by-5 landscape shots," Clark says. His images have appeared on Browntrout's Indiana calendars for quite some time, and a few years ago he and his contacts at Browntrout decided it was time to add an Indiana edition to the publisher's "Wild & Scenic" series. The result was released in July.

The book is divided into 26 sections that correspond with the state's different landscape types, as defined by the Indiana Geological Survey. With such names as the Wabash Lowland and the Norman Upland, the regions are not widely known to most Hoosiers, but Clark says each has its own character, distinguished by varying topography and soil types which, in turn, allow a different mix of vegetation. "It gave us a good framework to organize the book," Clark says.

"There is a lot of variety," he continues, and many people in and outside of Indiana don't realize how diverse the Indiana landscape really is. "A lot of people who are here don't know that these places are out there."

Among other scenic spots, Clark is fond of state parks and the state-owned fish and...