POD for real men

I was thinking, why let blurb or any other company do the printing of my book when I can do it myself.

I am considering, if anyone is interested, to make a small edition of hand made books, printed on real rag paper. I think I will limit to 5 copies, since there is very much work involved. I haven’t calculated the cost of materials yet, but off the top of my head right now I would say maybe 60-70USD in production cost. I was not planning on making profit of it, maybe just selling it 10-20$ above the cost of the material. If I decide to go for it, I will bind it in the same style as the book I made two months ago (link here).

It may be a bit more expensive than the blurb alternative, but at least it is hand made, and printed on fine art paper.

Post a comment if you’re interested. No obligations so far. I will do a better estimate on the cost, and find out if I really want to do it (lots of work, but fun).

already discovered a faulty image

It seems I made a minor miss on one of the photos, which I fixed just now. Still not one month, so I am allowed

I used a Photoshop action to add the black border and to expand the page with white so they would all be the same size, which is exactly the same size as the page. This makes it really easy to place the images. Just pop them in and let them fill the page   – done. Anyway, I redid all the images for the final version, but I forgot one. This one already had the black border and white page, and got the treatment once more. It didn’t look that good.

I was pleased that it only took me 10 minutes to export a new version of that image, prepare, link it into the document, create the pdf and publish it again. Now I really feel the Monthly folio stuff is paying off. It really has smoothed out the workflow for publishing pdfs.

SoFoBoMo is done

I finally managed to sit down today and finish up the pdf. the text is really written in a hurry, but I think it will hold up. I also think I have got at least some of the pages to hold together photographically. Anyway, one month have passed, and this is what I got.

The photos are the result of only 4 evening shoots. Probably 6-7 hours total. I kept the layout simple, which saved me a lot of time. A square book with centered images (slight bottom weight), and a small amount of text spread out.

The image processing was long and tedious for a few of the shots, and very brief for most. I did a couple of exposure blends, and two focus blends. Many of these images really need quite much post processing due to the large contrast range, but I think I have made the best out of my limited time.

So, here is a link to the pdf, mind you it is rather big (6Mb).

Right now, when I got this project of my chest, the rest of my life is calming down as well. I will probably find more time for shooting, and I will try to look through most of the other SoFoBoMo contributions. The coming week is a vacation week for me, so we’ll see what I’ll do.

first book mock up today

I helped my mother putting together some furniture today, and unhinged my back in the process. I had a vague thought of getting down to the river after the work was done, but my back put a definite end to that. Instead I have spend the evening picking pictures and putting them together. So far, I have 38 pictures, and some blank pages for text. The format will be square, the layout will be super simple, and if you would print it, I would probably end up in the range of 20×20cm to 25×25cm (8×8 to 10×10 inch).

I feel quite confident now that I will finish the book now that I already have something that qualifies. The next week will probably be spend rethinking the image selection and sequencing. And of course, writing a few words on those blank pages.

Another trip to the river

Managed to get down after work. I even found yet another bridge I didn’t know of.

sofobomo status, one week left

I won’t deny that my project is not in the best shape. Haven’t had any time to shoot since my last post. I will try and squeeze in one more during the weekend, and then I have devote my time to finishing. I’m determined to finish something that qualifies. I can gather 35 images that won’t embarrass me, and with one more shoot, I will probably have at least some to choose from.

This project is kind of like in the industry, the only certain thing is the deadline, whatever happens before that just happens. As long as it meets the requirements, it’s ok.

For this project the requirements are quite relaxed. 35 images on a single theme, gathered in a fixed sequence to give the impression of being a book. So it doesn’t even need to be a physical book, and the requirement says nothing about the quality of the content, so anything within these boundaries is a success. It may be a load of crap, but at least it will be a completed load of crap

I will try to do a bit better than that though.

Making the project smaller

In order to stand the slightest chance of getting something out, I must make my project smaller. My original intention was to photograph all the bridges along Akerselva, on of the rivers that runs through Oslo, but there is just too many of them. Trying to get to them all felt more like I was part of that Canon commercial. The one where a bunch of people fell down from the sky and started to literarily run around taking pictures. Not my way of doing it.

So I will only do the project partly for the SoFoBoMo book, but I will probably continue afterwards. I will focus on a much smaller stretch of the river, and do even more details on the bridges that I photograph. Today was my third day shooting, and I will try to get two more.