SoFoBoMo Eve

Well, it’s the eve of SoFoBoMo. Time to get started, I guess. Well, since it’s a ‘fuzzy’ month, the eve can be anytime between now and May 1st, but it’s the eve for me. I will start tomorrow. Today, here in Charlotte, it’s a cloudy, rainy, and cold day. The forecast for the rest of the week looks like more of the same. Dreary and rainy. We need the rain, so it’s all good!

A few bloggers have expressed that they will blog often about their projects. I will probably be pretty quiet about mine. Not that it’s any kind of secret, but because I don’t know what I could possibly write about, except at the end of it, perhaps. I’m still learning Scribus and, just for kicks, I have changed my mind about what I am going to do. How’s that for indecisiveness! Actually, after doing “One”, I decided to turn my attention back to the gardens at UNCC.

Previously, the working title of my book was:Around The House: Dance of the shadows. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the idea of the book, but I think that I want something a little bit more challenging. I want to delve into the unfamiliar.

At the University of North Carolina, Charlotte (UNCC), there are two gardens. One, I’m very familiar with, The Susan Harwood Garden. It’s a good bet that any flower that you see on this blog will have come from that garden. The photo ops are appreciable, to say the least. Now, on the other side of the path, there is the Van Landingham Glen. This is a garden, if you will, of mostly trees and bushes. There are very few flowers and it is, for the most part, monochrome, that is, green! I’ve never been enchanted by this side; however, I imagine that there is some magic there and that I just have to spend time with it to find it.

What will make this project even more challenging is that it is now basketball season and every weekend in April, and I do mean EVERY is already fully scheduled. BTW, the link is to another site that I maintain for my son’s basketball team. I’m the webmaster, head of media, chief transportation officer for my son, etc. The only weekend not scheduled for basketball is this coming weekend, April 4th, and we are going out of town. So, I have no weekends available! Should be interesting. May is no better. Two weekends for basketball, two weekends for my trip to Utah. So, it looks like I’ll be spending my evenings in the garden … ummm, except Tuesday/Thursday as those are basketball practice nights and I help out there too!

So, now the working title of this book might be:

• The road less traveled – To steal from Robert Frost
• The other side of the path.
• Getting to know you.

The good thing is, I don’t have to decide on a title until just before I generate the PDF! As for the equipment I’ll use, I have no clue. I’m sure that I’ll use my D2x, my macro lens, perhaps a flash or two, and maybe a 50mm, as well as the 11-18mm lens. I have no clue. I don’t even really know much what the glen looks like. It’s all discovery for me. Oh, I will have my Chinette plate/reflector with me!!!

I guess that it’s good that I did “One”! I might need to do it again!

One II

Looking back to yesterday when I shot and made a book in about 2 hours and 15 minutes, I thought about the experience. In the heat of it, there was no thought whatsoever, which was good. There was no time to over-think, procrastinate, or second guess myself. There was only time to do it.

As most of you who replied mentioned, the layout was questionable. Of course, there was no thought put into it. In going back to the book and looking again at what I had, I may do a, as Kate said, One Prime. Then again, I may not. I like the rawness of the book as it stands. The rawness, or roughness, fits the title and the intent. Were I to think about making it a coffee table book, I’d change the title, do some additional editing, etc; however, at this time, that is not in the works.

This exercise did give me some much needed visual feedback. Were I to assemble the book into a more polished version I would divide the pictures by chapter, if you will. One chapter might be simply called “Red”, another, “Green”, another “Curves”, and a final chapter, perhaps “Stalks”. Who knows. These are some that popped into my head.

Side effects

There were some interesting side effects. First, Anita said:

Paul, I had already taken this post quite personally. It seemed precisely tailored to address my time concerns. Thanks a million for shining a light down the path.

Wow! I’m glad that I helped. The only targeted outcome was to see what I could do in an hour. Cool!

The second side effect was even more humbling when I got elevated to “hero” status by “Pope Paul”, AKA, Paul Butzi in this post entitled: The end of angst! I’m really glad that Paul got something so positive out of this. Again, cool! As you can tell, my brain’s thesaurus is off-line today as the best that I could do was “cool”.

A final side effect was in finding out how much I love that garden. I may switch my topic! Grrrrr!!!

OK, back to what I learned. Initially, I was thinking of adding words opposite the pictures, but now I think that I’ll just stick with picture titles and come up with some format that I like. Perhaps the title will be on the left page, in large-ish bold letters. Perhaps they will occupy the top or side of the page, depending on the orientation. Food for thought.

Anyway, the project, in my estimation, was a rousing success as far as giving me new ideas about the finished product. It gave me just the shot of inspiration that I needed, and it seems, gave others that shot as well.

One

One is a SoFoBoMo warm-up book. I wanted to severely constrain myself and produce a work based on the number one. I’d appreciate any feedback that you’d be willing to give. The size is about 2 MB, so if you are using dial-up, you might not want to do this. I’ll work on getting an html version.

My point was to try to see how easy, or perhaps difficult, it would be to put a quick project together with my current tools. I cannot afford Adobe InDesign, or even Adobe Acrobat, for that matter. Well, I could probably afford it, but didn’t want to come off of $600+ at this time.

So, using Scribus, Lightroom, my camera, and one hour of my time to shoot, an additional hour to make edits and put the book together, I came up with what you see here. Actually, it took more like 45 minutes to shoot, 1 hour to edit and export, and about 30 minutes to put the book together. What a journey that was.

The part that took the longest was discovering that somehow I had switched my export settings in Lightoom from 72 pixels/inch to 72 pixels/centimeter! I was wondering why all of my pictures were way too large!

What I learned:

• Wow! An hour goes quickly, especially when editing and trying to think of something to say!
• I need more time to think about picture titles, so I skipped them.
• I like Scribus. It’s very powerful and, once you get used to it, rather easy to use.
• I need to think a bit more about the format of the book. I like 8×8, but need to think more of how to fit the pictures in the book.
• Shooting from the hip, so to speak, is fun. Turn the brain off, find a nice spot, and react to life.

I shot exactly 100 pictures. From those, I picked the ones that I liked best, or that spoke to me within the time constraint. There are 12 pictures in the book.

Artistic Integrity?

Just another pretty face?

Interestingly, just near the start of SoFoBoMo, there is a contest called Photography Book Now. Thanks to Chantal Stone for mentioning it on her blog. The gist of the contest is to put together a book and enter it in the contest for a chance to win $25,000 USD. Not a bad take at all! Further, there are a couple of 1st prize takes of about $5,000 each in camera and equipment.

If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you know of my disdain for contests. Perhaps disdain is a bit too strong, more of a preference not to participate. The value of my own work is to be judged by me. Do I fear the judgment of others about my work? Not really; however, sometimes, I must admit, it can temporarily sway me and cause me to move in another direction. Usually, a course correction is done in short order. There is no way to judge a contest objectively. It rests solely on the subjective ‘feelings’ of the judges and their unique life-experiences as to which books/photographs will win.

Regarding the judging criteria:

A panel of judges will be tasked with evaluating the best of the best. Books will be judged in their entirety: the whole, which is more than just a sum of the parts. Additionally, judges will look to excellence in these six categories:

* Cover Design
* Strength of the photography
* Subject matter of the book
* Page layouts
* Editing and sequencing
* Emotional impact of the overall book

I would argue that, perhaps, the cover design and page layouts might be able to be judged somewhat objectively; however, the strength of photography, subject matter, and emotional impact … well, probably not. What I consider a strong photograph may be rather weak to you. A book with emotional impact for you, might be a real yawn-fest for me. It depends on our background and experiences.

Each of us who is participating in SoFoBoMo is doing it for a personal reason, not for the accolades received by our peers or perhaps a big whopping $25,000 check. We each have our own reasons. I wonder, though, if we were to take our SoFoBoMo book idea and consider submitting to ‘Photography Book Now’, how much would the content and layout of that personal work change? We know that the current trend is for hyper-saturated, flashy, wow-the-senses-photography. So, would you change your book to have a chance to win the money? Does that diminish your artistic integrity?

They say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Value is in the same category. Your idea, 30 days of walking with your dog, the last 30 days before your husband goes back to Iraq, 30 days of shadows around the house, or 30 days of moving, to name are few, are all very valuable, yet, if entered in the contest, may not have emotional impact, or value, for anyone but you.

We have this insane desire to slice, dice, separate, rank, and judge everything around us. As part of my life’s journey, I am doing my best to take what comes to me and simply appreciate it for what it is without judging it to be better than, the best, first, last, good, or bad.

I am so happy to be participating in SoFoBoMo because it’s not like that, at least for me. It’s about putting your personal vision out there without the fear of what others might think about it, or how they may judge it. It’s about getting it done. It’s about silencing the inner critic for a month. That is its value to me.