Photographer of the Year

As a gift to someone last year I gave a calendar featuring images shot by Julius Shulman and I've been confronted with those images (posted to the side of a refrigerator) on a daily basis throughout 2008. The angles and clear lines he gets in almost every shot are ideals to strive for, not only in the photography of architecture. 

Prior to the publication of his enormous book by Taschen in 2007,  there was a summary article about him in Metropolis that sums things up nicely.