I will admit to having been awful at finishing photography projects off, love starting them; the excitement of something new but not a great track record of finishing. It was always that last 10% that was my undoing, by then I had probably completed enough to be satisfied but not enough to say it was final. A big challenge for me was knowing when to end a project, particularly something landscape based where new material can be created almost endlessly around any one theme. Partly this comes from jumping headlong into a new subject area without really having thought it through but, quite probably the biggest issue originally stemmed from how I came to photography, it was invariably from a non-project based approach. I would just merrily go about my way photographing subjects as and when I came across them, be that just visiting local spots or further afield, or maybe just out for a walk with my camera. Consequently, whilst over time I built up a large body of work that I could loosely group into similar subject areas there seemed to be no real sense of purpose or outcome.
So I began to structure my work around a small number of themes, this started to give me a bit more focus but at that stage I was still unclear as to what I wanted to achieve with that work; how I would present it once completed. Would it simply go online for five minutes of interest and then gather cyber dust, maybe submit to a journal or magazine as a feature, better still though was the thought of something that would persist. Something along the lines of printed work that could either be collected, exhibited or published in book form was where my thoughts started to turn. Of all the photographic work that has had a lasting impression on me, it has been of the physical tangible form, there’s something about that extra dimension above simply viewing something on a screen that somehow registers deeper experience for me.
As a result I initially started by looking for a way to wrap up a number of my developing portfolios of work but quickly came to realise that a number of them would indeed be open ended and not great candidates at the time to close off. One potential candidate portfolio, as of yet to be shown online, I estimated probably had a couple more years to run to gather the necessary material to flesh out the story I was developing around (quite close to completion now though). That really only left one option and that was start a new project, yep, you heard it, to try and start getting better at finishing projects I started a new one! My thoughts were along the lines of defining a fresh new piece of work that I could plan in advance, structure, have an end product and time box. All I had to do now was to think of one, not that was really a problem though; I have more ideas than I am ever likely to have time to see through. Coincidentally, a new opportunity popped up in late summer in 2012, the potential was immediate both from an interest perspective but also perfect in time bounding it.
It was while visiting a number of locations during the local Open Studio’s Art week that a casual conversation with the owners of a very splendid historic property led to an open invite for me to come back and explore their grounds with my camera. It was only after a couple of early morning visits that the project potential soon emerged. Quite a simple idea really; done many times before, undertake a photographic study of a subject through the four seasons creating a tightly focussed piece of work. Nothing too challenging in concept or intellect and, with the convenience of being local so I could progress it without too much effort.
So, I had it all planned out and got to work with the project in the late autumn of 2012. I chose to shoot it with colour film, both medium and large formats, choosing to work with just two emulsions; Velvia 50 and Portra 160. The combination of those two covered off all eventualities and allowed me to process the work in a way that appeared consistent across the project. I was also processing and scanning the film, and printing the work myself which meant I had full control over the output. All was going well, I would frequently deviate from my normal journey to work when the conditions favoured and of course through the repeated visits I got to know the grounds intimately which meant I could plan in advance when certain subjects were likely to be conducive to the conditions I was after. I started to create some work I was really pleased with and a couple of the early images garnered quite a bit of interest through my website and have subsequently been published elsewhere and generated a good few prints.
I was now all set at this stage to approach the owners with a proposal to convert my personal project into something a little more extensive and ‘commercial’. My intent was to open up the idea of a book project for them, a ‘souvenir’ for them here and now but also something that would also persist as a snapshot of the time when their custodianship of the property passed onto future generations or owners. However, it was the owners that made the first move, suggesting would I be prepared to put together a book of the grounds for them.
We discussed and agreed some basic terms, which were primarily related to their privacy; completely understandable of course. With the primary condition being that the book would remain private but, I was at complete liberty to use any of the work that didn’t directly identify them or the property as I wished. In reality the condition wasn’t a problem for me as much of my work majors on abstract and details as opposed to the wider and immediately identifiable location anyway and I was unlikely to want to make use of the images showing the buildings or more formal structures. So, not a bad result then, I get to produce quite a large body of work I can use pretty much how I wished and my costs are covered for the final product.
Other than including some ‘straight’ images of the property which gave the overall body of work some context for them, I was able to work entirely to my own brief which was quite liberating. This meant I was able to use it to experiment a little with different approaches to subjects, different film emulsions and of course explore the effects of seasonality on subjects. Overall though, the work was pretty much of a documentary nature, although looking to build a narrative through my approach of exposing the quieter more intimate details of subjects and in this case, representing the essence of the grounds.
Now with an end product in mind I was able to see how I needed to work the project to bring it to a natural conclusion and started the process of sketching out some book layouts and accompanying narrative. In true fashion though, I’d jumped in both feet first as this was to turn out to be a sizeable piece of work, With the final book running to just shy of 130 images in a 12″ square image wrap cover, this was a true test of commitment and ability. Notwithstanding the production and processing of the images themselves; made with film, I was beginning to understand the effort in putting something like this together. Fortunately both the discipline of the brief and that which also comes with using large format film at least meant my hit rate ratio of images taken versus those used in the book was high.
As this was to be my first book project, with me responsible for everything but the print and, the numbers of books to be produced was in single digits I elected to go down the online book publishing route. After a short bit of research and evaluation of products I plumped for Blurb. It was a nice easy entry point into the self-publishing route for me and had the added benefit of software integration into my preferred digital processing software; Adobe Lightroom. Although there are a small number of other similar alternatives out there if I was to go down the self-publishing route again, with the knowledge I have now, I would almost certainly now turn my attention to exploring some of the smaller traditional print companies that are now starting to find their way online to tap into this area. For very low volume print runs they seem comparable price wise but offer the benefits of slightly more customisation and very quickly become much more economical once you start to push volumes moderately higher. Given that the final amount of books I was asked to produce went up considerably at the last moment, in hindsight this may have been a better option. That said, I am still in two minds as to whether handling all the production aspects of further book projects are where my interest lies; it’s currently a big overhead considering I have precious little time for the photography itself.
However, it didn’t take too long for me to get into a working routine of creating content, laying it out in the templates I was working with and then creating digital proofs to keep the clients; as I’ll now refer to them, up to date on progress . Then closer to completion I took the wise option of creating a scaled down proof of the book, scaled both in size and numbers of pages; just one content section and, with introduction and index layouts. This then gave me my proof for final image processing purposes and most importantly how much tolerance I had to expect from the Blurb print process; I hadn’t expected the final print to be right at the extremes of their page cut tolerances!
Once happy, files were uploaded and books ordered. We had chosen to go down the route of image wrap on the cover which provides a modern look. How that resists wear and tear over the years is yet to be seen as I’ve not handled any books which use that cover finish that are more than a couple of years old. But certainly they prevent the issues of ripping unprotected dust jackets. The paper stock was the premium lustre which gave a little extra punch over matt and the finger print resistance of glossy, helped keep the costs manageable on such a large book and suited the images well. Their Proline endpapers were selected for the inside covers which gave the book a nice little quality lift.
As there was no urgency for the product, turn around was an acceptable 12 days, although I believe this can be improved upon on request (extra cost). As to the actual quality of the final product, for what it is, I was genuinely pleased with the general look, feel and print quality. Let’s be clear though, it’s not a top end product but does sit quite neatly in that mass produced photo book category you could expect to find in a traditional bricks and mortar bookstore. Not a problem for me though as I knew that would be the trade-off going down this route but, more importantly, the reaction from the clients was fantastic – and that’s what counted.
I am not planning to talk a great deal further about the photographs themselves as I will reserve that, and how I generally approach my photography, my motives and intents for another juncture. In the meantime though, along with some pictures of book spreads and prints, I have picked out a few images from the project to show in the gallery below.
In summary, although a bit of crash course for myself in editing and producing a book like this, the learning obtained from it has been invaluable – I am now much better placed to go into other similar projects with a much better view on what’s required and, when approached to take on something similar I can take an objective view on whether to commit and at what cost. All in all it has been a really rewarding project, the reaction from the recipients of copies of the book have been really really encouraging; not least the fact that one of the clients is themselves a very talented and noted artist – a couple who I have now become good friends with. What more could I ask…
If you wanted any more detail on any aspect of this project feel free to drop me a line, and to confirm, the book is not for public sale but prints are.
Image gallery