Corn State. Prairie State. Garden of the West. Each of these nicknames for the State of Illinois has a truth to tell. But not the whole truth. The world-class lens of Willard Clay reveals secrets about his home state that justify another nickname: the State of Hidden Delights. For WILD & SCENIC ILLINOIS, Willard Clay has crisscrossed the state’s byways and trails in his search for the rare, the beautiful, the seldom-seen jewels of the Illinois landscape. WILD & SCENIC ILLINOIS is the most discerning and the most rhapsodic portrait of the natural face of Illinois ever published. Clay has gleaned his images from every province in Illinois, ranging across all seasons, times, and natural subjects. The photographs are systematically grouped into Illinois’s various landscape provinces, described in an informative text by naturalist Robert Hutchinson. In the photographer’s introduction, Willard Clay shares his tips for tackling the technical challenges of shooting the landscape of Illinois. Formerly a professor of botany, Clay traces the source of his photographic inspiration to his close and patient observation of the face of nature.