Solo Photo Book Month

trishw78

www.sofobomo.org
www.twitter.com/SoFoBoMo

So I know from previous years that some boards memebers have taken part. So I'm just putting it out there for everyone else. This will be starting from 1 June 2010 till the 31 July 2010 during that time you can take 35 shots over 31 days & you produce a pdf.

I'm taking part this year & I've spotted a few other names on the list for this year.

This could be a great project for people to work on & at the end you'll have a nice little book.

So I was wondering if the participants from previous years would like to impart any wisdom on those of us doing this for the first time, please do.

Covey

Did it last year as in, took the photos etc, but never got any further. Couldn't figure out the pdf thingie, so it never saw the light of day

superflyninja

sounds interesting....
question the first. how much does it cost?

trishw78

Doesn't cost a cent only your time

Covey

superflyninja wrote: »

sounds interesting....
question the first. how much does it cost?

It's free. you make your own.

artyeva

i might give this a go this year. though i'm not promising mine won't go the same way as covey's

Roy Rogers

Interesting... Project 365 seemed a bit intensive for me, but this one sounds much more manageable.

Think I'll sign up!

dakar

Everyone should do this!

Overwhelmingly positive experience, it costs nothing to sign up, nothing to take the photos and nothing to organise them into a book layout, and if you do get a book printed up, there's a fantastic tactile pleasure to having a book of your own photos in your hands that seeing the same images on screen just can't match.

Just do it!

dave66

Thanks for the info, sounds like just the thing I'm looking for!

theboat

Just signed up
I've a project of sorts in mind for the summer anyway. This seems like a perfect incentive!

dakar

Covey wrote: »

Did it last year as in, took the photos etc, but never got any further. Couldn't figure out the pdf thingie, so it never saw the light of day

That's a pity. All I did was make blank photoshop files the size of the page I wanted and plonked the images I wanted wherever I wanted them on the page. Then saved the whole thing as a big jpg, and loaded them into the photobox software and used each as a full page print.

The pdf thing is pretty straightforward too, cos you just save the jpg's as a pdf file.

Go on, you know you want to do it this year!;):D

elven

It's a good thing to do if you don't usually work in series of photos. The editing and (if you decide to incluide one) a narrative are interesting experiences, if nothing else. I've done it for two years now. Got a few posts about it on the old text blog too:

http://seethedetails.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/brainstorming/ some ideas about how to decide what to base a book on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/julieodonnell/2485325533/ My first book

More stuff i wrote:

http://seethedetails.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/outside-the-box/

http://seethedetails.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/the-post-mortem%E2%80%A6/

http://seethedetails.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/sofobomo-and-then-what/

dakar

My book from last year is here:

http://www.sofobomo.org/book-129-Forty-Fest-The-Book

I got it printed up as an A3 book with photobox. I think I'll go for a smaller size this year, and might try blurb just to see how it works out.

Possibly the only thing better than getting my hands on the book was handing a copy over to my friend whose birthday was being celebrated in the photos, and who didn't know the book was in the works.

If anyone has any questions about how to put stuff together, fire away. I'm no expert but learned a lot through trial and error last year.

Covey

dakar wrote: »

If anyone has any questions about how to put stuff together, fire away. I'm no expert but learned a lot through trial and error last year.

Yeah, but don't even know where to start.

Tried the PDF maker last year. Couldn't get the photos where I wanted them , the text where I wanted it or the way to flip the pages. I remember how frustrating it was that the pc got a great kick that nearly killed it.:cool:

I remember that book well Dakar and very nice it was too. I also remember the book you diidn't do "One Square Mile", which I thought was a great idea, that lots could do and get very different results.

trishw78

I saw your name twice on the list Dakar or maybe there's 2 Darren Carr's.

After seeing dakar's & elven's book last year it was something I wanted to do for this year. I've gone through about half a dozen ideas so far but i think I've settled on one-ish which may develop into something else

dakar

Covey wrote: »

Yeah, but don't even know where to start.

Tried the PDF maker last year. Couldn't get the photos where I wanted them , the text where I wanted it or the way to flip the pages. I remember how frustrating it was that the pc got a great kick that nearly killed it.:cool:

I remember that book well Dakar and very nice it was too. I also remember the book you diidn't do "One Square Mile", which I thought was a great idea, that lots could do and get very different results.

If you can open a blank file in PS or similar, thats where you start laying stuff out. That way you can put the text and pics wherever you want. Don't bother trying to lay it out in pdf, work in a big jpg. You don't even need to worry about pdf for printing, upoad the full page jpgs.

The pdf bit only comes in at the very end for uploading a copy to the sofobomo site. And even then it's not rocket science:D

The 'one mile' project should have worked, I had loads of pictures and intended playing with the contrast between small details and big vistas, but my brain just wouldn't click into gear. I couldn't make it sit right on a page.You're right, it has the potential to work very well. It would be very interesting to see how it would be interpreted by different people living in different places. Might give it another go sometime.....

dakar

trishw78 wrote: »

I saw your name twice on the list Dakar or maybe there's 2 Darren Carr's.

I think they're both me! I seem to have appeared twice, even though I had commited to doing the book as dakar, when I logged in as me, it told me I hadn't signed up to do a book, so I clicked it again. Oh well, might just have to do two books so!:)

artyeva

cheers for the info dakar and elven - i clicked on the ole ''sure sign me up'' button before the ole ''how the hell am i gonna cope with the technical sh1t'' lightbulb went on over my head it's been over 5 years since i did any print layout but sher i'll give it a bash.

Lagnagoushee

Signed up......now must start thinking!
thanks for the posts..........I'll probably knocking on the door for some help!

dave66

Just wondering if people would like to share what software they are using to create the PDF.

I'm on a really strict budget, I'm still using Photoshop 7 until I can afford to upgrade to Elements (I wonder is that an upgrade) so think I'll probably be using Scribus to create the book, altough I have considered using MS-Publisher and then printing using PDFCreator (which is free).

AnCatDubh

Lots of ways of doing the pdf / book thing. Granted that some methods will be better suited to books with more detail / layout challenges than others.

Here a really simple one for a landscape style book. This assumes that all your image preparation happens outside of the publishing process - for example, in Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements or the Gimp.

Use Google docs (you already have it if you are on gmail) - and eitherways, its free if you don't already have it.
Create a presentation in google docs.
Insert your images, new pages, any text that you want...
Lay it out to suit yourself / set a background for example if you want your images to appear on black or grey.
Click File->Download as->pdf

Done.

This is simple but in fairness mightn't be suitable for more complex layouts plus be careful if you are going to submit something like this for an actual book print on lulu or the like (normal stuff - image resolution, etc.).

I also use "cute pdf" as a free way of producing a pdf from other appications, so using this you could lay it out in microsoft word for example and print to cute pdf to create the pdf file.

Covey

ACD - does that put your pdf into book format or just an unsightly top to bottom thing like in word ?

dakar

The only reason you need a pdf as part of the sofobomo project is to upload a copy to the sofobomo website.

As such the quality doesn't need to be great, in fact, there is quite a small size limit on the pdf upload IIRC and I had to downsize the file quite a bit to get it under the limit.

I put mine together on Automator for mac.

In terms of getting a physical book printed, most of the print on demand services allow 'full page' images. As such, you can make up a layout of your photos on a blank PS (or other image handling software), mimicing the page layout you want, with the appropriate size/resolution for the printing service, save as a jpeg, and upload this to the POD service.

In other words, don't get stressed by the pdf-ness :cool:

Covey

dakar wrote: »

In other words, don't get stressed by the pdf-ness :cool:

As someone who went to the bother of taking the images, including driving a fair distance, and never uploading it due to the PDFness (or my lack of same), it is, at least for me, a big factor.

You don't really want to go the bother and have it look like a dogs dinner at the end.:eek:

This year i've 3/4 ideas but I'm not starting any without knowing I can create a decent PDF. Otherwise I find it too frustrating!.

AnCatDubh

Covey wrote: »

ACD - does that put your pdf into book format or just an unsightly top to bottom thing like in word ?

Depends on what you mean by book format. It doesn't do anything fancy. It is after all a presentation tool. The output when you [file->download as] is however a multi-page pdf representation of your "presentation" which in terms of what you are doing is really your "book" viewable in the adobe acrobat reader showing one page at a time. You could for instance decide to self publish your pdf book from the above example to an online service like scribd and it would appear as an online book with flickable pages.

Assuming that by book format, you mean, a series of pages with content on those pages then yes - you end up with a book. When I say it doesn't do anything fancy, I mean that it doesn't for example put a cover on it or do an index - if you want a cover or an index then you should include a slide [page] with whatever you want on the cover and another for the index.

dakar

All I'm saying is that that trying to produce a book by working from the start in PDF format is a pain, and you're creating unnecessary hardship for yourself. It's a pity to go to the trouble of taking the photos and then get pi$$ed off working in an awkward format when there's a more straightforward way of doing it (jpeg) which gives you a lot more flexibility and usability.

dave66

I played around with using PowerPoint to create a presentation at lunch time then outputed to PDF using PDFCreator and it worked pretty well

sheesh

I am going to try and give this a go. haven't a clue as to what I'm going to do yet.

GristlyEnd

I never got around to even starting mine last year despite signing up. I'm going to sign up again but this time I actually know what I'm doing, which is a help

sheesh

hi all as regards making a pdf another free option would be open office.

openoffice writer can export documents to pdf haven't a clue how good or bad it is but you could do something.

openoffice.org is the url afaik

Calina

I use ACDSee Pro to export to pdf (didn't do this lately but did a book of Irish beaches lately to fire up on my website)

As the file size out of ACDSee was better than the size out of PS, I'd do it that way again.

dave66

What have I done, this starts tomorrow (well for me), having second or is it 6th thoughts about my theme :eek:

trishw78

\o/ yay it starts tomorrow I thought I had settled on a theme, but looks like I'll be doing 2 different ideas that may or may not work.

elven

hmmm i have one project in mind, but if i end up going to bloom and shooting enough there i might just base it on that...

dave66

This is first one I have signed up for, is it normal/appropriate for people to share their themes in advance?

Ballyman

dave66 wrote: »

This is first one I have signed up for, is it normal/appropriate for people to share their themes in advance?

Same as that. Just signed up.
My wife is due our first child in the middle of June so I'm going to try and do a daily bio of her and me before, during and after the birth all going well of course!!

dakar

dave66 wrote: »

This is first one I have signed up for, is it normal/appropriate for people to share their themes in advance?

Entirely up to yourself!

Mine will be an extension of my Today in the Office project, although I have an idea for another project that might happen towards the end of June as well.

What I'm trying to do this year (as opposed to just scraping belatedly over the line with my book last year) is to be a bit more disciplined, restrict my photo choices and see if I can make a coherent entity from a pretty wide subject base. At least that's what I'm aiming for, I like a challenge!;)

It's great to see so many boardsies on the list this year.

dave66

Ok, so my theme for SoFoBoMo is "A Moment in Bray". I live in Bray and it struck me that often as photographers we are ready to jump in the car to head away from home to make photographs and we often overlook what's on our own door steps. In a way this is an extension of a project I set myself "Close to Home" where I forced myself to find things within 100 feet of my house, trying to make myself look at familiar things with different eyes. So with my SoFoBoMo theme I want to look at Bray in two ways, find images or moments in time that say "Bray" and also to try look at the place with fresh eyes - this time last year my Brother and his wife came to Bray from Knoxville in Tennessee and they said they loved Bray, thought it was really nice - I want to try use their eyes to see what they saw.

That's it, probably a load of s*i*e, not at all sure I can achieve what I have set you to do, but sure I'll give it a go!

dakar

It's a great idea, actually very similar to my original plan last year (although I live in a rural area and gave myself a mile radius), but I got a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing and couldn't/wouldn't make it work.

By way of encouragement, I can definitively say in hindsight that putting the book together is the fun part, and nowhere near as much hassle as I had myself built up for last year

Enjoy!

swingking

I'm going soley for black and whites in the form of fine art landscapes

dave66

Well the earliest possible start date is here, best of luck to all taking part!

Roy Rogers

I still need to settle on a topic :S Won't be starting my 31 days for another week or two I think!

hopelessOne

I used Scribus last year to produce the PDF because I wanted to do some layout but it was a bit fiddly and slow. And then I wanted to get it printed as Christmas presents so I ended up copying the layout into Blurb's photobook tool. This year I'll probably go for a simple 1 JPEG per page layout just for the PDF.

Last year's theme was "A Mile of Coastline" around Garretstown, Co. Cork. This year I'm thinking of exploring the abandoned houses of the Clare coast.

BTW, Issuu (which I used above) is a nice way to present your PDFs.

AnCatDubh

everyone settle on their topics?

haven't signed up yet / still mulling on a theme

can 'random' be considered a theme?

dave66

AnCatDubh wrote: »

everyone settle on their topics?

haven't signed up yet / still mulling on a theme

can 'random' be considered a theme?

I've got my theme, some friends have heard about it and are now chiming in on suggestions for shots, I wonder if I use their ideas for inspiration if it can still be considered as a solo book?

Don't see why Random can be a theme

dave66

So folks, how are people progressing on their SoFoBoMo projects?

I now have 14 of the required 35 images and actually have them inserted into the document. So just 21 shots to go in the next 8 days :eek:

hopelessOne

I have all my images shot which is a) great because now I just need to edit and format but b) scary because I can't go back to reshoot (they were all based around Clare). So far it's looking good though

dave66

hopelessOne wrote: »

I have all my images shot which is a) great because now I just need to edit and format but b) scary because I can't go back to reshoot (they were all based around Clare). So far it's looking good though

Well done you, work/life is conspiring against me at the moment. Managed to get another shot done and inserted last night, hoping to get another 2-3 tonight

dave66

Finally got my book finished and uploaded, even made it by the deadline!

trishw78

Mine has failed I probably have a quarter of the shots. You have until the end of July to complete it

dave66

trishw78 wrote: »

Mine has failed I probably have a quarter of the shots. You have until the end of July to complete it

Stick with it Trish, I started to panic near the end, but got there in the end and it feels darn good. I might even think about doing another one, I have two weeks holidays coming up so might actually have time.