Crazy But Able

First off, sorry for the lack of updates. The quintuple whammy of computer issues, family sickness, visiting relatives, World Wide Pinhole Photography Day, and ridiculous work deadlines (entirely my fault for majorly underestimating and overpromising, but now I have to deliver on my promises) all conspired to eat away all of my free time these past couple weeks. I figured I could let the weblog slip (better to be out doing than yapping about it), but even so I didn’t get out nearly enough. Yesterday I didn’t even think I was going to be able to finish my book with the original theme under the original constraints (spring; every picture taken with the Coolpix 4500). Fortunately today I got a good five pictures, and although they are a little rough, and normally I’d go back to the same site and retake them obsessively until I got exactly what I wanted, I think they can stand on their own. In fact, a couple of them are among the best photos of the book.

I’ll get the contacts out maybe tomorrow or the day after, I hope. In the meantime, a word about process. Unlike Paul Butzi and others, I did not opt for the “take a crapload of pictures and edit them all at once at the end of the month” route. I’ve been editing and picking selects as I went. Every day I downloaded my pictures from my camera, I would go through and make my picks, print out the best, and arrange the prints how I wanted the book done.

This means I’ve been staring at the same 20 pics since the 15th, and ever despairing how I was going to get the remaining 15.

I was originally hoping for a strictly chronological book, but choice of subject matter on different days, and color vs. black and white considerations led me to vary it up a bit. It’s mostly chronological, starting out with several inches of snow, and ending with… well, I don’t know how it ends yet. I need to take two more pictures (no pressure!) tomorrow. Four, if you count the pics I’m going to need for the title and cover page.

As for the final form of the book, I’m going with MyPublisher and using their software. Since they don’t have an export PDF function, and since my book is all full bleed photos with no text, I’m going to export a Lightroom slideshow as my uploadable book to sofobomo.org.

It’s kind of a bummer because I want to talk about some of the photos in the book but I love the full bleed aesthetic. Maybe I’ll talk about some of them here. One of them is great, I used the coolpix to take the picture through the viewfinder of a 70’s German pocket camera. When I post the final book, see if you can guess which one it is.

I was going to do a second sofobomo book right after this one, but I picked an even more constrictive set of constraints for the theme. I like the idea and may do something with it in the future, but realistically I’m not going to have the time to finish that one in a month. If I can come up with a good theme by May 1st, I may do a second sofobomo book yet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 11:13 pm and is filed under SoFoBoMo, general foofiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.