Screen shot of my U.S. Highway 89 book
Progress, frustratingly slow, but progress nevertheless. I don't dare put a date on when it will go to press, but it is going. Here's a screen shot of the introductory spread for Chapter 8. I am very happy with how it is coming out.
There are 176 images in the book (as of today, may change tomorrow). In selecting images, I was grateful for some good advice I absorbed early on, and wished more times than I can say that I followed it more rigorously early in the project: once I have a cooperative subject and a good composition, to shoot it for a variety of crop formats. The image of Lower Yellowstone Falls, for example, I shot wide, so I could crop at an 8x10 format, and long, so I could use a 2x3. I have some that are horizontal. The rainbow lasts for only a few minutes, so it's important to have a plan to get all the different aspect ratios I might want later on.
I wasn't 100% consistent in shooting for completeness early on, and sometimes things are so fast moving, I only got one shot. Since I'm designing this book myself, I had the luxury of making my images fit to the text, but sometimes it would have been a lot easier to have a vertical image that would crop to the size I needed, rather than fitting the one I had, or settling for a horizontal one and redesigning a spread.
If I can't make a lot of shots, these days I am shooting wider, filling the shorter dimension of the frame, but leaving room for cropping on the long side since the 2x3 format is pretty restrictive. But if I can, I shoot lots of options. I get teased sometimes by other photographers for taking way more shots than others, but I have turned that old advice into hard-won experience, and a few extra electrons isn't going to hurt anyone.
As my friend Bruce Hucko says to me, "Drive on!" Just a few more mileposts to go.
P.S. If you want to get an email when this book is available, please visit my handy email email form to sign up.
Comments (3)
Ann -- of what effect would Genuine Fractals have had in you production process for re-sizing -- obviously this was not an option, but I would be curious to hear if you tried it, or considered it.
JSturr
Posted by John Sturr | June 15, 2009 10:09 PM
Posted on June 15, 2009 22:09
Sounds like the book is going to turn out very well. Oh, please have it done before December. I'm hoping to give it to a few friends for Christmas.
Posted by Phil | June 15, 2009 11:26 PM
Posted on June 15, 2009 23:26
John,
I haven't tried Genuine Fractals, although I am interested in it for making very large prints. For the book, the real task is downsizing, and I am very satisfied with how Photoshop has been handling the images. The printer will want them images placed in the layout program (InDesign) at 100% of actual size, at 300 dpi. Luckily, InDesign tells to two decimal places the percentage of actual size the image is placed at, so all I've done is enter those numbers in Photoshop's Image>Size dialog box. Tedious, but doable.
Posted by Ann | June 17, 2009 10:33 PM
Posted on June 17, 2009 22:33