Last year, my approach to SoFoBoMo was rather haphazard. I chose my theme at the last minute, then I went and did my shooting, learned the tool (Scribus) while putting the book together, and just meandered about until I had a finished product. Certainly, this methodology, if you could call it that, has some serious drawbacks.
This year’s project will be different. Last year, I didn’t even read the instructions on how to use Scribus. This made my work even more difficult. Desktop publishing software is so much different than a word processor. There are terms to learn and understand. What the heck is a Drop Cap? How can I get those big initial capital letters in my text like I see in the books? Oh! Those are Drop Caps?!!! Who knew?! 
There is a completely different way of doing things. This year, I’ve already started reading the instructions, following online tutorials, and have started a practice book, tentatively entitled: In praise of spring. This practice book will illustrate the joys of shooting in the rain. I’ve taken to it, as they say, like a duck takes to water! I hope to finish it in the coming days. No. Make that I will finish by Sunday, April 5th! Gotta have a hard deadline to work towards!
In doing the upfront work, in other words, understanding my tool and how a publishing work flow works, I am learning how to make a production ready book. Last year, I used fairly low resolution JPEG images. This year, I’ll use 300 DPI TIFF images, just in case I really want to have the book printed. Last year, I didn’t choose my fonts and styles ahead of time. This year I will. Last year, as mentioned, I meandered about as I put the book together. This year, I will sketch the story / layout first, take the pictures, write/spell check/proof read the text, then I will use the tool to assemble all of them. Scribus, by design, encourages you to use text files and import your already marked-up, proofed text into the editor. There is no spell checking or grammar checking built in. It’s built, I think, to allow different parties to do different things, such as photography, graphics, writing text, doing layout, and then having someone assemble all of those pieces into a finished product. It helps to understand that.
By doing a lot of upfront work with fonts and styles, etc. It should shave a lot of time off of the finished product. Also, by having a road map, knowing where I’m going, it will help to avoid those dead-ends that I encountered at times.
I’m still collecting ideas for a theme and soon I’ll have to decide.
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8 Responses to “SoFoBoMo:Story first”
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I doubt I’ll be as organized for SoFoBoMo as you. Being my first experience with this project I’m going into it lightly, as a fun exercise. I’ve previously created and published a very simple photo book so I’m not feeling totally lost at the process.
I still haven’t nailed down a theme yet. That will probably happen on the day I start the project and could change somewhere during it.
I like the details of the duck in the rain. Nice tone, colors and the cropping/composition of the shot is great. From what I can see, I’d have to guess that if you were using your 18-270mm you were shooting near full out–if has a complimentary background compressed look.
Paul, I think the kink in all of my SoFoBoMo planning is wanting to have my cake and eat it too. I want a ‘real’ book and I want a .pdf book. The real book thing through Blurb has different requirements. Trying to find a way to take two paths is making me a bit crazy. Especially since this is my first year to do SoFoBoMo. You sound sooooo together on this. I’m envious. LOL
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You have brought up some things that I have been thinking about. I hope to have at least settled on typefaces and general layout before May 1. Last year, my so-called process was probably more haphazard than what you have described. I was still being surprised by what was evolving during the final day before deadline.
You certainly manage to make shooting in the rain look like fun. (I love the duck, even though looking at it makes me feel a little cold and damp.) Do you use a serious rain-cover for your camera, or something homemade?
@Anita: I was going to write about the amazing weather sealing job that Nikon does on the D300, but I’ll just tell you … I don’t use anything. I just shoot with the camera fully exposed to the rain. I’ve done it about 3 times now without a hiccup. I do, however, worry about the lens a little bit, but so far, no trouble.
That duck shot is wonderful! Singing colors, neat and tight composition – and those water drops. I’m not sure whether the duck enjoyed them, but I certainly do!
You seem to be rather organised and prepared for SoFoBoMo. I’ll take a couple of minutes and see whether I decide to get a bad consience…
@Thomas: I’m looking for the road that will make it easier. I’m doing my best, I think, to make it a little easier on myself this time. The least that I can do is learn the tool!
It sounds daunting to me but you seem to have a good handle on your plan of attack.
That is a sweet shot of the duck. Wonderful details.