making books part three

Quick update on my efforts to make books: I received the remade book from Lulu. It was much better. The quality is actually pretty good. It's not equal to the printing of a high priced photography book from one of the elite publishers like Abrams - but it's not bad. I also ordered a small ten page test book to see how the printing worked with a variety of different colors and contrasts. What I discovered is that in order to come close to matching the saturation levels of the colors on the screen, you must increase the saturation in the file by 20 -30 %. This is not news to any of the prepress people out there, I guess. There is no way that the reflective value of paper could match the brightness of the light coming from the monitor screen - so you have to compensate.

There are some positive reviews of Lulu Press' work in the comments on making books part two. Check them out. One of the comments is from the publisher of U&I Magazine which is printed by Lulu. I'm going to order a copy.

making books part one

evidence

evidence
Originally uploaded by lightpainter.

I love this effing image... right now. tomorrow, I may hate it. but i don't think so.


December 6th... I still like it a lot.

making books part two

I’ve learned much since my last entry on making books. I’ve been pleasantly surprised and very disappointed. I’ve had to readjust my thinking on what’s possible and reconfigure my plans for how I would make any books I create available for sale.

First the good news: The iPhoto iBook medium paperback looks really good. I would have no problem with selling these books as a representation of my work if the printing consistently looks like the copy I received. But I’ve only seen the one copy and I don’t know if the quality is consistent. What makes me question the consistency is that there are many complaints on the iPhoto forums about quality. I don’t know if I’m less particular, if I got lucky with this one book, or if the quality of the data I sent to them was better than the quality of the data others had sent.

There are two problems with the iBook: First of all, it’s expensive. The $9.95 quoted at the Apple site is for twenty pages – but if you want to create a real book – with title page and copyright page, etc, then you use up twenty pages really quickly. The first book I put together came out at 48 pages. The cost of this, without the shipping was about $23. And it’s really a tiny little book – 8 by 6 inches landscape format. I like the size. I think it’s perfect for a monograph – for a small study on a particular subject - but pricey if I add shipping and any small profit I might like to receive. The second problem is that, although, you can have total control over the individual pages, you have very limited control over the front cover and none over the back. On the back is the classic apple logo and the small phrase: “made on a mac”. That’s fine if you want to show off to your friends that you have a Mac and great for Steve Jobs and company, but not so good if you want to create a professional looking product with your own logo and perhaps an isbn barcode printed somewhere on the back cover.

Now to the bad news: I took the same book but changed it to 9 by 7 inch because that is the size that Lulu books offers in the landscape format. I redid the images so that they would all be 300 dpi and of the same quality as the ones submitted to iPhoto. I submitted this to Lulu Press. The cost was much more reasonable for a slightly larger book. And at Lulu, you have total control over your covers and can add isbn info. You could also create a storefront, decide on a royalty you’d like to receive, and let them handle all of the processing of orders, billing, etc. I created my storefront and was all ready to go. But I guess you get what you pay for- because the quality was terrible. The images had a pinkish cast, there were blue streaks across many of the images and there were vertical lines etched across them as well. It reminded me of what happens when you get your inkjet heads gunked up and have to run the cleaning program. Actually, it was so bad that it had to be an error in printing. Realising that made me feel a little better - this couldn’t be the norm or they would do no business at all; but still, would I ever trust this company to send out product to any of my customers without being able to personally check every book myself?

I have to say that up to now, Lulu has handled the customer service part of the equation admirably. They responded instantly when I complained and reordered the book for me without question. I haven’t seen the remake so I don’t know what the ultimate quality will be - but it’s quite clear that the paper is not as good as that used by iPhoto – so this would always be a lesser book quality wise. And since I can’t trust their quality control, I doubt I will ever use their storefront or allow them to send anything directly to a customer – thus negating much of what they had to offer.

So I had to continue my search for a “print on demand” option that works for photo books - with photo book quality printing at a reasonable price – seemingly an impossible task. Then I found Viovio. Their website is confusing and poorly organized: it’s unclear what their mission really is – travel blogs or photo hosting or photo book making. But they offer a way to upload a book by pdf, and although they use the same printer as Lulu (Xerox iGen), they have just started to offer a better, glossier paper stock for the inner pages. You can create your own covers and use your own logo. Also, they are focused on making photography books and are therefore motivated to find the best combination of materials to make images work on the page. Lulu, I believe, does most of its business with printed word books and are not focused on imagery. Viovio has been responsive and proactive to requests on their forum for improvements, offer the icc profile for the printer, and seem to be endeavouring to improve their product constantly. I would be worried that they are using the same printer as Lulu but for the fact that the cover on the Lulu book, made on the same printer but on better paper stock, looks pretty good.

So, we’ll see. I haven’t seen the remade Lulu book or the Viovio book printed on better paper. I’ll keep you posted.

making books part one

peter pan slept here.

peter pan slept here.
Originally uploaded by lightpainter.

Another one of my favorites.... no comments, no faves, almost no hits on flickr. To be fair, it doesn't look like much from the thumbnail.

I think that an image like this underlines my artistic split personality. I can make images that are extremely popular with the masses (see below); and I do like most of them, for the most part. Then there's this side - the photographs that really hit me in the gut - and I'm basically a fan base of one.



11,233 views and 340 faves on flickr - as of today - on this one.

Musings while smoking a cigar:

Why do I ignore the compliments but take to heart any critical comment anyone ever makes about my work? It's like they found me out - saw through the smoke screen.



Smoking a cigar - does the relaxation, the feeling of peace that I attain while smoking make up for the health risks of the smoke?

E. B. White - who I thought of after I wrote my piece on stars and coyotes. I went and found "One Man's Meat on my bookshelf. I love his style - elegant and clear. I aspire to write like him. I'd love my blog to be little essays about whatever I'm thinking about. I'm bound to become a better writer if I write regularly.

Stars and coyotes

One of the things I love about living in the country is the magnificence of the starry sky. Early this morning, before the sun rose, after loading fresh logs onto the coals left in the woodstove, I went out with the dog. I was instantly drawn to the radiance of the stars glistening through the tree branches. Out here, without any airborne pollution or extraneous light, the sky is velvety black and the stars are so bright that you can't help but notice them as soon as you step outside. I was reminded that I had just read that the idea for putting lights on Christmas trees came from Luther - who noticed the stars flickering through the boughs of a conifer one night. He thought that a candle lit tree would symbolize God's magnificence.

In the city, stars are a murky business, something you might or might not notice. It's no wonder that urban dwellers are distant from nature, and from any sense of man's insignificant place in the universe. When everything that surrounds you is man-made, it's easy to start to believe that you are the center of it all. In the country, when you look up at the sky, you are aware of our minute place in the grand scheme of things. I wonder how much of our spiritual connection to our world has been altered in ways we don't consider, by the technology we have created. In the world that existed before Edison and the invention of electric lights, for most of the world's population , every clear night was a testament to the grandeur of the universe - a lesson many of us don't receive today.

Have you ever lain on your back in a meadow on a moonless and cloudness light and looked at the stars? Imagining the incredible scope of what you see? Looking into a far distant past - because the light has been traveling so many thousand, maybe millions of years before it touches your retina? It's quite easy to become disoriented and feel like you are falling endlessly into that infinite space.

Some mornings, still dark, when l go outside, I hear coyotes. They create a wonderfully wild cacophony of sound. Sometimes it's a howl, and then it's a kind of mad chaos, like a badly out of tune orchestra trying to tune up - or as my neighbor says - like children being tortured. When he told me that, soon after we moved up here, I thought he was exaggerating. But then one dark morning, I heard it. The cries came from one direction at first, growing and waning, and then were answered by other packs and soon I was surrounded by these wild sounds. It lasted for several minutes and then suddenly died away to silence. But the raw feeling of wildness stayed with me all day.

Making books

Some time ago, a very successful friend of mine told me he wanted to publish a book of my photographs. He wanted me to learn InDesign and do the layout myself. I was thrilled at the prospect because, who doesn't want a book? Or, as my friend said, "There's something about a book." But I was about to move and didn't have time to attack the project right away. As time went on and I didn't work on it, I got further and further away from the idea that I could make it happen. I guess I was afraid that I wouldn't be successful at it; and that I wouldn't be able to find the proper theme or pick the right images, or, or, or. Every excuse I could think of not to move forward.

Thankfully, I've had a paradigm shift in my thinking (or better fear-of-failure management) and I am now ready to move forward. Why now? I have been thinking about the elusive, fragile, and transitory nature of the digital medium. Most of the work I do now - that all of us who do art on computers do now - is intangible. What I mean is that there is nothing that can be held in one's hand or placed on a wall or stored in an old yellow Kodak photo paper box. The images are stored in formats that might not be easily accessible with tomorrow's technology - on storage media that is unproven over the long haul (cds, dvds, etc.). While I'm alive, I'll make sure to resave my work to the newest and most durable media. But it's a constant, time consuming effort to manage all of this stuff. And will anyone else bother? Or even know what lurks on my computer and in the boxes and boxes of cds gathering dust on my shelves?

So, that's why a book now. I want something that lasts beyond me in a form that is easy for my kids and grandchildren to find and examine. Totally narcissistic right? But what could be more narcissistic than writing a blog anyway? Assuming that what one says has any value to anyone else.

I decided that before I begin on the book I was asked to make, I would make one or two others in order to become accomplished at the process and art of book design. Because there are several viable publishing on demand (POD) options out there now, I could design a book, make a copy or two, and offer it for sale if I was satisfied. If not, I hadn't invested much money and I had learned a lot.

iPhoto's iBook has several new formats and most importantly, you can choose blank pages without a template. The templates offered by iBook and My Publisher (non Apple equivalent) are really basic and not very attractive. So, what I've done is to lay out a book in InDesign that is the exact dimensions of the iBook. I can save the InDesign book to a pdf file and then use Acrobat to save the individual pages as jpegs which can then be imported into iBook. It's been working very well.

After I had already started laying out my first book for iBook, I learned about Lulu. Besides offering POD, they can also register the book for an isbn from the Library of Congress and offer it for sale through Amazon and B&N, etc. I think I might try them for my next book.

making books part two

floating island

floating island
Originally uploaded by lightpainter.

the north fork from shelter island - the sort of moody image that I am often attracted to.


I rarely get much response for an image like this on either flickr or fotolog. It seems that the ones I respond to best, the ones that I have an emotional attachment to, do not move the general public. I have to remember to be true to myself and not get seduced by the feedback for other, less emotionally honest images. It's very easy to want to please the crowd - keep those comments and favs coming - and lose sight of how I really want/need to express myself.

Someone on flickr commented that the image isn't sharp and therefore less than it could be. I don't understand this fixation on sharpness. To me, this image is a dream - and thus, not completely clear by its very nature.

morning sun

morning sun
Originally uploaded by corespirit.

Another powerful image by Cor. She made this early one morning in our backyard.

Corinne's new flickr space

My wife, Corinne, has been making many images lately. We live in the country and she is very attuned to the changing weather and sky. I've finally convinced her to let me start a flickr space for her. So here it is.



This is one of her amazing images.

Ingrid's main blog

I just realized that my friend, Ingrid



has another blog besides the one I referenced before. So, here it is.

doesn't work on safari completely

Since I'm somewhat of an idiot when it comes to html and to all of this blogging stuff, I couldn't figure out how to do links. I assumed there would be a link button for technical dummies like me but I couldn't find it. What I discovered is that there is a link button but it doesn't show up in safari for some reason. So I switched to the newest mac browser from netscape and lo and behold there it is.

switching

Here I am, two days into the blogger universe and I'm switching already. The first one I made was through tripod, where I host my pitiful website. It was easy to do and I had already created several blogs where I placed photos. But I didn't really like the look of it and they seemed to be on the fringes of the blogging world. I went to Ingrid's blog and wanted to leave a comment. In order to do so, I had to sign on, so here I am.

signposts

I don't know what it is about the backs of signs. and I like vertical lines that cut all the way through an image. can't explain. i think I'll make a stamp out of this.

zazzle

my stamp gallery
Flickr just offered some new options. You can now send your flickr photos to a printer from within flickr and either have prints mailed to you or to your nearest Target Store for pickup. I don't think I'll ever use that service. You can also select various sets of your photos to make into a book. I don't think I'll ever use that either. Not that I don't want a book, but because I need to have more control over how it looks than is currently offered by this service. I'm working on that now (creating a book) and will report on my efforts soon. But what caught my attention from the new offerings is the ability to create US Postage stamps out of your artwork. You can create them to use privately, or you can "publish" them for others to buy. If you sell any, you get a small royalty. I decided to give it a try and have submitted 3 of my more popular images. Click on the images in the gallery to see the stamps. Pretty cool, actually.

what i like

I really like this one. That's all. Nice to see it again- and at this size. I like my images presented small. So you have to get close, intimate - not pushed against the back wall like you do with big poster size prints. I want your breath misting the glass of the frame.

genesis

So, here it is. I've been avoiding this - making a blog with words instead of photos - for a long time now. I'm a fairly private person - and I didn't think that I wanted to create a collection of blatherings for the world to see. But I had lunch with my friend, Fred, today and he convinced me. OK, time for a link, let's see if I can make it work here:
Fred's blog

OK, that worked. Time for bed. Next chapter: my photos on stamps and what I'm doing with InDesign.

'nite