Blurb Books – The Photo book

I can’t believe you do not know about photobooks, they have been around for a few years now and the quality and range keeps improving. I have made books using different suppliers for a number of years. My first was an iphoto book, later I tried a Photobox book, then an Aperture book and recently YourPhotobooks. I have moved around with suppliers to get an idea of the quality they produce and the ease of book assembly. This week I completed a second book on my trip to Laos over Christmas and the new year and this time I went for Blurb Books. It is possible these are the market leaders although I am not sure how you could work that out. Their overall quality is excellent and their technical sophistication, explaining colour space, providing icc profiles etc far exceeds those of the other suppliers I have tried.

Blurb Books a photography book by Keith Barnes about Laos

If you are interested to look inside my book click on the cover and it will take you to the Blurb site where you can preview it’s content.

I decided to go for the largest size available and as I had shot rather a lot of images whilst away it has a lot of pages. I tried using the templates for pages supplied but found this didn’t suit the layout I wanted. One of the very nice things about Blurb is that you can create your own page templates and save them so it is possible to define something unique to your purpose. Not only do you have choice of book sizes but also cover types, hard or soft back, wrap around or dust jacket, there are about 5 different paper types you can select also. This really is as close to a bespoke service as you could want.

The cost reflects the service, I always budget about £1 a page for an A4 photobook, this is pretty cheap if you think you can get several images per page. I probably have about 200 images in my Laos book and even at the cost of £70 for the 150 pages that is still only about 40p per image and many are full A4 in size. I decided not to try to make a profit on my book but Blurb allows you to set your own price and make profit on the difference when someone buys it. You can also put your books in their library for the world to peruse and choose to buy if they like your work.

Why am I telling you about this, well I have always thought of photography as something that has a point when it becomes physical. Viewing on screen on line is OK but if you want to collect your work into something that actually reflects your portfolio then prints or books are a must. You will be surprised at the reaction from family and friends when you show them a book(s) of your work and you will always have something to hand to show, no need to boot up the computer.

 

5 Essential Considerations for Sharpening Your Street Photography

This article  By Tiffany Mueller is on Lightstalking

“Street photography tells a story in ways that other types of photography can’t. They are spontaneous, interesting, and perfect mementos of a moment in time. As a street photographer, you are capturing life as it happens which may not be as easy as it seems. Moments can happen in a flash and you have to be ready roll when you see something that strikes you as photo-worthy. There’s no time to fiddle with lighting, tweek your camera settings, or set up a tripod. Next time you find yourself roaming the streets, camera in-tow, try using some of these tips and see if you can take your street photography to the next level.”.…MORE

When in doubt find the light, and then wait is my advice

©Keith Barnes – Laos

Stockholm Photography Week May 28 – June 3, 2012

WHAT IS HAPPENING?
On the schedule you will find an international portfolio review, a photography feedback review, an open portfolio night, seminars and workshops as well as exhibitions. This is an event for both professional photographers and amateurs, as well as for the regular photographic exhibition visitor.

The Portfolio Reviews are one of the main events during Stockholm Photography Week 2012. This year, the reviews are divided into two sections: Selected Portfolio Reviews and Photography Feedback Reviews……FULL DETAILS HERE

Stockholm Photography Week is a week-long celebration of photography that takes place at the Swedish Museum of Photography (Fotografiska).

May 28 – June 3, 2012

“World-renowned photographer Sally Mann is one of the most important and influential photographers of today. Mann has released numerous books, including Immediate Family (1992), What Remains (2003) and Proud Flesh (2009), and is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York.”

Artist Talk

ARTIST TALK with SALLY MANN
SATURDAY JUNE 2, 6:00 pm
followed by a book signing
at FOTOGRAFISKA

© Night Blooming Cereus © Sally Mann. Croutesy Gagosian Gallery.

© At Warm Springs © Sally Mann. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

© Hayhook © Sally Mann. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Here are some of the events planned……

SELECTED PORTFOLIO REVIEW
The Selected Portfolio Review is for established or up-and-coming photographers, wanting to expand their international contacts with world-renown institutions, galleries and book publishers. In this section, 15 internationally renowned experts from the field of photography (gallery owners, curators, editors, etc.) all of whom can make a difference to working photographers, will review the portfolios of 40 photographers over the course of two days. Participants will be scheduled to have eight 25-minute one-on-one reviews with these experts. Applicants will be pre-approved by a jury.

Application to the Selected Reviews is now open!

THE PHOTOGRAPHY FEEDBACK REVIEW
The Photography Feedback Reviews are open for all photographers. Photographers can choose among professional photographers, art directors and photo agencies to present their photographs for. You choose yourself which reviewers to see, how many reviews to attend and when. The reviewers are well-established photographers as well as professionals with extensive experience of working with images within different genres. You book each review session separately thereby creating your own schedule based on your particular interests.

Application to  the Feedback Reviews is now open!

National Geographic Magazine: 50 Years of Covers

See some of the most compelling National Geographic covers from the last 50 years and learn about the significant milestones reported in the magazine’s pages—all of which are available in The Complete National Geographic, a collection of every issue of National Geographic magazine in a six-DVD-ROM set.see the gallery link here.…MORE

Photograph by Steve McCurry

June 1985—Afghan Girl
When photographer Steve McCurry took a young girl’s picture one morning in Pakistan, he created an image that would captivate millions around the world. The haunting green eyes that stared out from the June 1985 cover of National Geographic belonged to an unknown refugee who for 17 years was identified simply as the “Afghan girl.” She has since been located and was once again featured on the magazine’s cover in April 2002.

Photograph by Albert Moldvay

January 1967
Dressed for Eid al-Fitr festivities, two young girls play on a swing in Pakistan, then made up of two lands located on opposite sides of the Indian subcontinent. The cover’s traditional interior border of oak leaves and acorns, first introduced in 1910, begins to recede around the increasingly bold feature photographs.

Photograph by Michael Nichols

July 2006—Panda, Inc.
A year after his celebrated birth at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., panda cub Tai Shan appears on the cover of National Geographic with mother Mei Xiang. Unapologetic cuteness abounds on the pages within—something feature author Lynne Warren writes may, along with their persistent scarcity, largely contribute to the popularity of China’s beloved bear.

Photograph by David Doubilet

April 2000
A shot inside the notorious mouth of a great white shark is a fitting introduction to Jaws author Peter Benchley’s feature article on the threats facing the surprisingly fragile predator. Twenty-five years after the box-office hit based on his novel terrified moviegoers, Benchley and photographer David Doubilet set out to portray the ocean’s great hunters in a different light.

See them all here

Nan Goldin Photographer

Rather surprisingly our most successful post ever has been about Nan Goldin, a photographer of great merit but who probably divides opinions. This from the Tate website gives an artist biography and has images.

“American photographer. Goldin began taking photographs as a teenager in Boston, MA. Her earliest works, black-and-white images of drag queens, were celebrations of the subcultural lifestyle of the community to which she belonged. During a period of study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, she began displaying her work in the format of a slide-show, a constantly evolving project that acquired the title (appropriated from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht) The Ballad of Sexual Dependency in 1981. This collection of images had a loose thematic structure and was usually shown with an accompanying sound-track, first in the clubs where many of the images were taken and then within gallery spaces. In the 1990s Goldin continued to produce portraits of drag queens, but also made images of friends who were dying of AIDS and recorded her experiences travelling in Asia…”.….MORE

Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC 1991

© Nan Goldin, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

Nan one month after being battered 1984 Nan Goldin

© Nan Goldin, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC 1982

© Nan Goldin, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

There is a very interesting interview by Angelique Chrisafis in The Guardian

‘My camera has saved my life’

From New York’s druggy nightlife to her parents ‘making out’, Nan Goldin chronicles the real and the raw. She talks to Angelique Chrisafis about art, pornography and tabloid critics

“Nan Goldin leads me into the bedroom of her Paris apartment, fluffs up a pillow and settles down on her bed, lighting a cigarette. Her pink dressing gown hangs over the door of her wardrobe; there are black and white stills on the wall. It’s fitting that the legendary photographer should want us to talk in her bedroom, side by side on the patterned bedspread: long before Tracey Emin’s unmade chaos, Goldin specialised in the silences of rumpled sheets. Since the early 1970s, she has shot herself and friends in bed – having sex, sleeping, arguing and, after Aids struck, dying. She curled up with her boyfriend Brian, and later shot a bruised self-portrait after he hit her.”.…MORE

Here are some links for further study

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Goldin

http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/nan-goldin/

http://www.artnet.com/artists/nan-goldin/

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=7532

and here is a link to our original post

Selling Your Photographs Through Stock Libraries: An Introduction

This useful article By Jason Row  comes from the well thumbed pages of Lightstalking

“Before the advent of digital photography, there was no micro and macro in stock photography, royalty free was a little used term and image catalogues were large glossy books with just a selection of the best images. To purchase an image you either asked one of the library’s researchers to look for it or you went in person and trawled through thousands of transparencies on light boxes. Apart from a few big stock agencies there were hundreds of smaller ones each dealing in their own niche’s such as music or historical images.

The face of traditional stock photography was changed beyond recognition by two major developments, the advent of the digital camera and the rise of the Royalty Free license, both of which lead to the development of the microstock agency . So if you wish to offer your images for sale at a stock library, which should you choose, micro or macro?”..….MORE

An image that has sold well at a macrostock agency

Here are some links to stock libraries

http://www.istockphoto.com/

http://www.alamy.com/

http://www.reflexstock.com/index.cfm?&DIS=1

http://www.corbisimages.com/

Click Here: Selling Your Photographs Through Stock Libraries: A Primer