Last week I managed to finish the SoFoBoMo 2010 Photo book project. This is the 3rd year I have completed the joint photography projects with many photographers from around the world.
While it is still a fair bit of work to complete this from start to finish within the 31 days, it is getting easier. The easier part is now not being stressing out over the various steps that are needed to finish the book as I better understand the effort and various steps.
The hard part is still deciding what to include in the book theme as, if you are like me, you might tend to grab too much at one time and then worrying if your photos are good enough.
The image link below allows you to download the 2.7 MB pdf file.
I had planned another elaborate theme but events this year once again caused me to change course. Its a good thing I learned early on to always have a plan 'B' and even plan 'C' in place for when events change not as planned.
One photography genre I haven't spent a lot of time with is studio settings with controlled lighting, diffusers and other light modifiers. I do a lot of cooking and one of my thoughts is to one day create a food blog where I write recipes and use my photography to highlight components of the prepared food.
With that in mind I decided to setup a table-top home studio lightning setup and to photograph food that I regularly eat. As a sub set I also decided to limit the food to those with a hard edge, which would exclude foods that are mainly leafy. Those will be left for another day or is it salad.
In the next article I will show the studio setup and light modifiers I used.
Having already finished 2 books The pressure was off this year. I was doing photography I liked and if I didn't finish in time I would be disappointed but not devastated. The journey and learning were more important than actually completing the book within the set time frame.
This year I was just as excited with producing the book as I was the first year but my grandiose dreams of where it may go in the future are toned down with some reality from the other 2 books. But I do have some ideas for some future books that will be produced in hard cover and that I hope to sell a few copies of and one of those is to work more with food.
The great benefit of working with edible food well.., is that its edible. You get to eat it after you are finished. Not a bad way to work.
For those of you who have not as yet undertaken the SoFoBoMo project I can't overstate the learning opportunities both in photography, telling a story, and then producing a real book even its an ebook, its still real. Also for many photographers the taking of pictures is normally a reaction to a scene/event unfolding and therefore a somewhat unplanned happening even if is one that you made a decision to visit. Producing the photo book is about planning ahead of time for a story in pictures and then finding the images that convey that story. A different way of thinking for me.
Do visit the SoFoBoMo 2010 site and browse the many goods books being produced. I am certain that seeing some of these books will give new ideas about where to take your photography.
Niels Henriksen
