It's that bluebonnet time of year again in Texas. The shot above was taken with a second-hand, manual focus, fixed f8 aperture, low quality Samyang 500mm mirror lens, with some fungus on the glass. Not the best lens choice in the world, but the poor quality of the optics adds a certain something to the end result. There are even a few tell-tale 'donut' rings to prove it is a mirror lens.
A thought-provoking podcast from Brooks Jensen on PDFs, over at Lenswork. Brooks pitches the PDF as the next big thing for publishing and the medium where photographers who are interested in working on the cutting edge should be publishing their work. I've heard Brooks talk about PDFs in the past as a great means for publishing but he seems to be going further this time. I assume that's the experiences he's gained with the Lenswork Extended product. Typically photographers think about the published, physical book as the ultimate end goal, but here the PDF is put forward as a better option, particularly as a means of distribution. I've produced a few PDFs and it is a good experience to go through, making the selections, doing the layout and editing. It does always feel home-made - without that stamp of authority that a publisher, other than yourself, gives to work.
But here the argument is made that the PDF is worthwhile goal in of itself, which certainly matches well with the goal of SoFoBoMo. Even there, the PDF decision often can feel like a forced compromise - we'd all really like to have it be a 'real' book, not an electronic file. But perhaps the PDF can be thought of as a higher goal than a printed book. More opportunity try new things. Perhaps even mix in audio with the images. Also, thinking on last year, I was able to see over 50 photographic books, that I'd never be able to see if I had to buy them - because of the cost, and the physical space required to store them. PDF certainly enables more people to see the work. Given how few of my pictures see print, PDF probably makes even more sense. There is the downside that the resolution of a PDF isn't currently as good as physical book. Also you've got the issues of controlling the viewing environment - you have no idea what sort of screen or calibration is being used to look at the end product.
At the same time, photography always feels like a successive series of disappointments, or reduction in quality. The images in your head aren't often as good as the image on the back of the camera. Those small images on the back of the camera often don't live up to the full size version on a screen. Once it's been processed, the prints are always one step removed from how it looked on a screen. Each stage reduces the quality of the image, real or imagined. PDF removes one of those levels of transformations. Maybe it can even be a truer representation of the image than a print, if we can sort out these resolution and calibration quandaries.
So what do you think? Is a PDF a good end in itself, or just something to settle for when you can't make a real book?
You can't just dance or paint or write or sculpt. Those are just verbs. You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however minuscule, is what turns the verb into a noun - paint into a painting, sculpt into a sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.
- Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
Jeff Curto just posted the second part of his Camera Position series on project planning. The first in the series really just sets the stage for what he plans to talk about. This second installment is more interesting and starts to talk about what kinds of projects you might want to work on. He provides some pointers on the ways to excavate project ideas that will be useful to photographers in general and also for SoFoBoMo in particular. Doug Stockdale is running a workshop with a similar goal in Long Beach in April. If you are interested and can't go, maybe you could let Doug know in the comments over there and he might provide a podcast.
Shameless ad: ride the Rosedale Ride on Mar 28. Great Ride. Good People. Worthy Cause. www.rosedaleride.org Make Vivian's dad happy.
Went to the ACP Mary Ellen Mark lecture last night. I was amazed by how many people showed up - they had to turn some people away at the door I think. A packed auditorium and an interesting array of images. One thing that stood out was she kept using the word 'relentless' to describe how to achieve the images she made. Going back, time and again, facing rejection and just turning up the next day to eventually get the acceptance and access she wanted to make the images. I'm already looking forward to the Alec Soth talk on the 4th of June. You can see more of Mary Ellen's pictures in the USA Character project. The rest of that body of work is also fantastic, with some great portraits by 11 photographers. Some really arresting images.
Trying to think through the things that worked well for me when doing SoFoBoMo and the things that I struggled with or would do differently if I was doing it again. Paul Lester has already provided some of his thoughts on this topic, too.
Don't over think this bit. It doesn't have to be the most overarching, complex project theme. In fact, the simplest idea is often the best to work with. Great ideas come from putting two small ideas together in an interesting way, so don't worry about it being too deep and meaningful. The real key is to make it something that is accessible to you. Maybe you'll shoot your entire project in a day, in which case, accessibility isn't too challenging, if you happen to be near the subject or theme. But if you want to return to it for a few times over the month, don't pick something that is far away or difficult for you to get to. It just adds one more barrier to getting it done. The best subjects and projects are those close to home that you are familiar with and have access to. Don't pick the American Southwest as your theme if you live in England and won't be there during the SoFoBoMo month. Some of the best books I saw last year had the simplest themes, for example, the numbers 1 to 35 in 'I can count' by ndalum78. A treasure hunt, a witty book, all in one simple and elegant project - all from a very simple idea.
At the same time you aren't over thinking the project selection, it is worth giving it some thought. Pick something you want to do or that interests you. You will be looking at the pictures a lot, so find something that fires your imagination and has enough depth for you to shoot 35 pictures of.
I'm not a graphic designer. I'm not a book designer. You don't have to be. I do have quite a few photographic books at home. I looked at them, with an eye to how they were laid out. Take some time to study the books you have available to you. Go to your library and look for some more. Instead of looking at the pictures too closely, pay attention to the structure and flow of the book design. Notice how almost all books you look at have two title pages, one very plain and readable, the other more stylised? After a bit of time spent looking at the structure you'll get a feel for the patterns you'll want to replicate in your book. It is also worth reading some introductory books on graphic design and typography. You don't need to be an expert but it helps to have some appreciation of what is going on.
If you plan on doing a layout of your own, find a book with the sort of structure and design you want and copy it. Make it your own, borrow hints from it, rather than going all out to design it yourself.
There is plenty of software that will let you lay out the pages. I used Adobe InDesign to lay out my pages, which has a big learning curve. There are easier options. The key is to spend a bit of time before the SoFoBoMo period getting all the kinks worked out. Make a sample book just to work out how to get from the start to the end PDF or printed book. It'll help you a lot to do this without the deadline pressure. I made a small book with Blurb the month before SoFoBoMo that really helped me understand how I wanted things to look. Use pictures you have already, or go shoot some in an afternoon. It will help.
Some people used PowerPoint. Microsoft Word. Microsoft Works. Most anything you can use to put images and text together and then print from, can be used to create a PDF book. If you have a Mac, the PDF printing is already built in. Most Adobe products on either platform will generate a PDF. If you have a Windows machine, there are several free PDF printer drivers you can install - then all you have to do is print to them and your PDF will be created. e.g., Foxit PDF Creator or pdf995
You probably don't need to go and buy new software to create a SoFoBoMo PDF. If you want to go to a finished book, things get a bit different. Shutterfly and Blurb both provide layout software for creating books. However, this software doesn't typically let you produce a PDF, without heavy watermarks or branding, so isn't ideal for a SoFoBoMo submission. I did my book in layout software and generated full page JPEGs for each page. I then used the Blurb software to put each of those pages as 'full bleed' (print to the edges) images. So I had the same layout without really using the Blurb layout software, other than to assemble the pre-designed pages.
I've been looking for information on getting an underwater housing for my Canon G10, to do some underwater photography. This site in the UK has a lot of good information.
Following on from the previous post, based on the idea of doing a book in a weekend. I then thought, maybe I could do one book each weekend for the whole month. Four books. Now maybe then they should be tied together somehow - common theme? Suppose maybe the front and back covers could be all parts of the one same image, that work together when arranged side by side. Now that needs a four individual but related project themes. Maybe you have 4 people in your family that you could use - a book on each person? Perhaps you could be one of those people and do a self portrait book? Doesn't work for me but it'd be a way to join the four themed books.
Paul had the good idea to request that we post more about SoFoBoMo and where the ideas flit in and out from, or try to capture some of the experience from last year that we gained. This evening an idea popped into my head for a SoFoBoMo project, while reading a different photography book. Reading always seems to stimulate these random ideas for projects. The main thing I've learned to do is to write them down. Then and there. So I was sent scrambling for a notebook, almost upsetting the cup of tea on the table beside me. It was just a simple idea, in part stimulated by Mark Hobson's post over on the Landscapist, about shooting a book in a day, that was very similar to Paul Lester's book in an hour from last year, One. I was thinking about what might make an accessible shoot to do in a day, maybe shooting from sunrise all the way to sunset or in to twilight. A good sunrise is always a colour event in my head and that triggered an idea from the book I'm writing, about shooting colours and using those as the motivation and guiding idea. I've used this quite often to help people get moving and taking pictures and I thought it would be a decent theme for a day's shoot.
Then I start thinking that I need 35 images and maybe I need to consider more than one colour. That leads easily to the colours in a rainbow - 7 colours, 5 shots each. Now that seems like something that could be shot in a day. Maybe the whole book could be shot and finished in a weekend without too much trouble.
But what does the book look like? Probably sections, themed or titled for each colour. Maybe I could use one of the standard mnemonics to bind the sections - Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. Or just go with something graphic using typography. The words repeated over and over, with the section picked out in that colour and everything else black and white. Or just repeat the word over and over.
Then maybe the pictures could tie or blend in to each other - so I shoot more solid reds for the middle images, but start to find some red/orange mixes for the overlapping sections, then more orange, all orange, then mix in some yellow and so on. These images could all be strung together small on one page as an overview of the whole book - 7 wide, 5 deep. Perhaps the cover page could be created out of letters shot on the same day, a red R and so on.
I might never make this book. It might be forgotten tomorrow - especially if I hadn't written it down. Maybe I'll come up with another 3 ideas and do 4 books in 4 weekends. This idea may well morph and evolve into something completely different. But the key was getting some of it down on paper. If you have ideas, respect them, capture them. You can always throw them away later and come up with more. But get used to paying attention to them and keeping them.
