The Rise and Fall of Tides is a testimony to one man's love of family and landscape and how the two have become inseparable over time. Writer and photographer Curtis J. Badger has combined his talents in The Rise and Fall of Tides to celebrate Virginia's Eastern Shore both visually and in verse. While Badger is widely known for his books on the natural history and human history of the coast, he also is a talented photographer. "I have had a passion for photography all my life, especially black and white photography, and it seemed a natural marriage to join poems and photographs in this book. Black and white photographs seem to me a visual form of poetry. By removing color, you are reducing the image to its essence. And so it is with poetry. The challenge is to create an image not by adding words, but by subtracting them, mining a thought to get at its core." - Curtis J. Badger